Detection of presence of parasites in human RBC in case of diagnosing malaria using image processing

Abstract

Malaria is the commonest protozoal infestation in human being residing in nearly 3 billion victims across 107 countries and 1-3 million deaths per year round the globe. The disease is generally diagnosed by examining properly stained peripheral blood smear as the malarial parasite particularly invades red blood corpuscles (RBC) of the circulatory system. For this reason, proper analysis of RBC is the most confirmatory diagnosis of malaria. Here in this paper, correct identification of presence of malarial parasite within RBC has been detected and severity of the disease is measured by analyzing the stage (i.e. Ring trophozoite, Merozoite, Schizont etc) of Plasmodium sp., the malarial parasite using different image processing tools and techniques. After several pre-processing activities, area of the infested corpuscle is calculated and Sobel Edge detection method is used to find the boundary of the corpuscles. Then Harris corner points are used to formulate a metric that can determine the severity of the disease. The purpose of this paper is to highlight this medico-technical aspect only.