Leukocyte nucleus segmentation method based on enhancing the saliency of saturation component

Abstract

The accuracy of the leukocyte nucleus segmentation is an important preprocessing step in the leukocyte automatic analysis. However, different dyeing conditions or different illumination conditions may cause capturing different color leukocyte images in microscopic imaging system, which will result in the over-segmentation or under-segmentation of the leukocyte nucleus. A leukocyte nucleus segmentation method based on enhancing the saliency of the saturation component is proposed. While applying the set of calibration offset values [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text], and [Formula: see text] of the red (R), green (G), and blue (B) chrominance value on the blood smear microscopic images, it can enhance the saliency of the saturation component and the saliency of the leukocyte nucleus region increases the most obviously. The leukocyte nuclei are then segmented using Otsu’s histogram thresholding method. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the related algorithms in segmentation accuracy, over-segmentation rate, error rate, and relative distance error. It improves the accuracy, robustness, and universality further.