Blood Smear Images Research Articles

Segmentation and classification of white blood SMEAR images using modified CNN architecture

The classification and recognition of leukocytes or WBCs in blood smear images presents a key role in the corresponding diagnosis of specific diseases, such as leukemia, tumor, hematological disorders, etc. The computerized framework for automated segmentation & classification of WBCs nucleus contributes an important role for the recognition of WBCs related disorders. Therefore, this work emphasizes WBCs nucleus segmentation using modified U-Net architecture and the segmented WBCs nucleus are further classified into their subcategory i.e., basophil, eosinophil, neutrophil, monocyte and lymphocyte. The classification and nucleus characterization task has been performed using VGGNet and MobileNet V2 architecture. Initially, collected instances are passed to the preprocessing phase for image rescaling and normalization. The rescaled and normalized instances are passed to the U-Net model for nucleus segmentation. Extracted nucleus are forwarded to the classification phase for their class identifications. Furthermore, the functioning of the intended design will be compared with other modern methods. By the end of this study a successful model classifying various nucleus morphologies such as Basophil, Eosinophil, Lymphocyte, Monocyte and Neutrophil was obtained where overall test accuracy achieved was 97.0% for VGGNet classifier and 94.0% for MobileNet V2 classifier.

Embedded System‐Based Malaria Detection From Blood Smear Images Using Lightweight Deep Learning Model

ABSTRACTThe disease of malaria, transmitted by female Anopheles mosquitoes, is highly contagious, resulting in numerous deaths across various regions. Microscopic examination of blood cells remains one of the most accurate methods for malaria diagnosis, but it is time‐consuming and can produce inaccurate results occasionally. Due to machine learning and deep learning advances in medical diagnosis, improved diagnostic accuracy can now be achieved while costs can be reduced compared to conventional microscopy methods. This work utilizes an open‐source dataset with 26 161 blood smear images in RGB for malaria detection. Our preprocessing resized the original dimensions of the images into 64 × 64 due to the limitations in computational complexity in developing embedded systems‐based malaria detection. We present a novel embedded system approach using 119 154 trainable parameters in a lightweight 17‐layer SqueezeNet model for the automatic detection of malaria. Incredibly, the model is only 1.72 MB in size. An evaluation of the model's performance on the original NIH malaria dataset shows that it has exceptional accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 scores of 96.37%, 95.67%, 97.21%, and 96.44%, respectively. Based on a modified dataset, the results improved further to 99.71% across all metrics. Compared to current deep learning models, our model significantly outperforms them for malaria detection, making it ideal for embedded systems. This model has also been rigorously tested on the Jetson Nano B01 edge device, demonstrating a rapid single image prediction time of only 0.24 s. The fusion of deep learning with embedded systems makes this research a crucial step toward improving malaria diagnosis. In resource‐constrained settings, the model's lightweight architecture and accuracy enhancements hold great promise for addressing the critical challenge of malaria detection.

Development of intelligent suite for malaria pathogen detection in microscopy images

The identification of malaria infection using microscope images of blood smears is considered as a ‘gold standard’. The diagnosis of malaria needs expert microscopists which are scarce in remote areas where malaria is endemic. Therefore, it is desirable to automate the repetitive task of pathogen detection in the blood samples received as microscope images. This study provides an easy to use and deploy method for implementing a malaria pathogen detection software- the Intelligent Suite. The Intelligent Suite features a graphical user interface (GUI) implemented using ‘cvui’ library to interact with the OpenVINO’s inference engine for model optimisation and deployment across several inference devices. The intelligent Suite uses a custom YOLO-mp-3l model trained on Darknet framework for detection of malaria pathogen in thick smear microscope images. Moreover, the Intelligent Suite provides user interface for inference device/mode selection, alter model parameters, and generate detection reports along with the model performance metrics. The Intelligent Suite was executed on a CPU computer with model inference running on a plug-and-play Neural Compute Stick (NCS2) and performance reported.

Fusion of Color Correction and HSV Segmentation Techniques for Automated Segmentation of Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia.

This article presents an enhanced segmentation methodology for the accurate detection of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in blood smear images. The proposed approach integrates color correction techniques with HSV color space segmentation to improve white blood cell analysis. Our method addresses common challenges in microscopic image processing, including sensor nonlinearity, uneven illumination, and color distortions. The key objectives of this study are to develop a robust preprocessing pipeline that normalizes blood smear images for consistent analysis, implement an HSV-based segmentation technique optimized for leukocyte detection, and validate the method's effectiveness across various ALL subtypes using clinical samples. The proposed technique was evaluated using real-world blood smear samples from ALL patients. Quantitative analysis demonstrates significant improvements in segmentation accuracy compared to traditional methods. Our approach shows strong capability in reliably detecting and segmenting ALL subtypes, offering the potential for enhanced diagnostic support in clinical settings.

BwMMV-pred: a novel ensemble learning approach using blood smear images for malaria prediction

The use of machine learning in healthcare has become widespread, enhancing the capabilities of doctors and clinicians. This study introduces a novel ensemble learning approach named Blending with Meta Majority Voting (BwMMV) for malaria prediction using blood smear images. The BwMMV technique combines the strengths of eight base classifiers to form an intermediate dataset, which is subsequently used to train five distinct meta-models using different machine learning algorithms. A Local Binary Pattern Histogram (LBPH) method is employed to extract texture features from blood smear images, effectively capturing the underlying patterns necessary for classification. The final classification decision is determined through a majority voting mechanism, selecting the outcome with the most votes as the final prediction. Our results indicate that the BwMMV approach significantly outperforms traditional hard voting and blending techniques, achieving superior accuracy, robustness, and resilience in performance. This innovative method demonstrates promising potential as a powerful tool for automated diagnosis systems, with the ability to be expanded to analyze various datasets efficiently.

Classification of Malaria Using Convolutional Neural Network Method on Microscopic Image of Blood Smear

Malaria, a critical global health issue, can lead to severe complications and mortality if not treated promptly. The conventional diagnostic method, involving a microscopic examination of blood smears, is time-consuming and requires extensive expertise. To address these challenges, computer-assisted diagnostic methods have been explored. Among these, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), a deep learning technique, has shown considerable promise for image classification tasks, including the analysis of microscopic blood smear images. In this study, we employ the NIH Malaria dataset, which consists of 27,558 images, to train a CNN model. The dataset is divided into parasitized (malaria-infected) and uninfected. The CNN architecture designed for this study includes three convolutional layers and two fully connected layers. We compare the performance of this model with that of a pre-trained VGG-16 model to determine the most effective approach for malaria diagnosis. The proposed CNN model demonstrates high accuracy, achieving a value of 96.81%. Furthermore, it records a recall of 0.97, a precision of 0.97, and an F1-score of 0.97. These metrics indicate a robust performance, outperforming previous studies and highlighting the model's potential for accurate malaria diagnosis. This study underscores the potential of CNN in medical image classification and supports its implementation in clinical settings to enhance diagnostic accuracy and efficiency. The findings suggest that with further refinement and validation, such models could significantly improve the speed and reliability of malaria diagnostics, ultimately aiding in better disease management and patient outcomes.

Ensemble learning using Gompertz function for leukemia classification

Leukemia, a life-threatening disease primarily affecting children below 15 and individuals aged 55 and above, is characterized by the overproduction of abnormal blood cells. Timely detection of leukemia plays a crucial role in significantly reducing the associated mortality rate. Given the recent developments in deep learning, the development of automated leukemia detection techniques using blood smear images has emerged as an important research area. This manuscript introduces a novel algorithm to classify microscopic blood smear images into five categories: AML, CML, ALL, CLL and normal. The study investigates the use of pre-trained convolutional neural networks powered by a fuzzy ensemble-based classifier. The fuzzy-based ensemble learning technique employs adaptable weights according to the confidence scores derived from the base learner models instead of using fixed weights for the base learner models. Gompertz function with parameters, α, β and γ are considered here. The parameters of the Gompertz function are further optimized using a grid search approach to achieve the most favorable classification outcomes. Conducting a 5-class classification, the proposed algorithm achieved an accuracy of 88.80%, surpassing the performance of traditional ensemble techniques such as average, weighted average and majority voting by a significant margin of 1.83%, 1.83% and 5.71%, respectively.

Staining-Independent Malaria Parasite Detection and Life Stage Classification in Blood Smear Images

Malaria is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in tropical and sub-tropical regions. This research proposed a malaria diagnosis system based on the you only look once algorithm for malaria parasite detection and the convolutional neural network algorithm for malaria parasite life stage classification. Two public datasets are utilized: MBB and MP-IDB. The MBB dataset includes human blood smears infected with Plasmodium vivax (P. vivax). While the MP-IDB dataset comprises 4 species of malaria parasites: P. vivax, P. ovale, P. malariae, and P. falciparum. Four distinct stages of life exist in every species, including ring, trophozoite, schizont, and gametocyte. For the MBB dataset, detection and classification accuracies of 0.92 and 0.93, respectively, were achieved. For the MP-IDB dataset, the proposed algorithms yielded the accuracies for detection and classification as follows: 0.84 and 0.94 for P. vivax; 0.82 and 0.93 for P. ovale; 0.79 and 0.93 for P. malariae; and 0.92 and 0.96 for P. falciparum. The detection results showed the models trained by P. vivax alone provide good detection capabilities also for other species of malaria parasites. The classification performance showed the proposed algorithms yielded good malaria parasite life stage classification performance. The future directions include collecting more data and exploring more sophisticated algorithms.

Leukocyte classification using relative-relationship-guided contrastive learning

Hematologic diseases and blood disorders can be studied through microscopic examination of blood smear images or chemical assays. Many researchers are focused on utilizing deep learning (DL) to identify, quantify, and classify various types of blood cells, which is crucial for addressing theoretical and practical challenges in disease diagnosis and treatment planning. However, there is a significant deficiency in annotations for leukocyte classification, limiting the effectiveness of current DL methods. Contrastive learning (CL) facilitates the extraction of prior knowledge from unlabeled data, reducing the dependency on manual annotations. While CL demonstrates remarkable achievements in classifying natural images, the direct application to leukocyte classification presents certain defects. We observe that standard data augmentation techniques in CL exhibit varying sensitivity to different categories of white blood cell images. Employing a uniform augmentation strategy may lead the network into an optimization trap, acquiring inadequate representations from erroneous sample relationships. To address this issue, we propose a Relative-Relationship-Guided Contrastive Learning Representation (ReCLR) framework for the leukocyte classification. ReCLR mines positive and negative samples based on relative distance knowledge. Specifically, we provide adversarial guidance for the positive sample, restricting the distance between the positive sample and the original sample less than but as close as possible to the distance between the original sample and the farthest negative sample. Then, we utilize the entropy constraint to regulate the relative distance relationship between the negative and original samples. Finally, the guided positive and negative samples are employed for contrastive learning in leukocyte classification. The extensive experiments, including linear evaluation, domain transfer, and fine-tuning, demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Our ReCLR achieves accuracies of 92.07%, 65.36%, and 92.49% on three real-world leukocyte datasets, respectively, outperforming several state-of-the-art methods. The source code is released at https://github.com/AlchemyEmperor/ReCLR.

Application of Machine Learning in a Rodent Malaria Model for Rapid, Accurate, and Consistent Parasite Counts.

Rodent malaria models serve as important preclinical antimalarial and vaccine testing tools. Evaluating treatment outcomes in these models often requires manually counting parasite-infected red blood cells (iRBCs), a time-consuming process, which can be inconsistent between individuals and laboratories. We have developed an easy-to-use machine learning (ML)-based software, Malaria Screener R, to expedite and standardize such studies by automating the counting of Plasmodium iRBCs in rodents. This software can process Giemsa-stained blood smear images captured by any camera-equipped microscope. It features an intuitive graphical user interface that facilitates image processing and visualization of the results. The software has been developed as a desktop application that processes images on standard Windows and MacOS computers. A previous ML model created by the authors designed to count Plasmodium falciparum-infected human RBCs did not perform well counting Plasmodium-infected mouse RBCs. We leveraged that model by loading the pretrained weights and training the algorithm with newly collected data to target Plasmodium yoelii- and Plasmodium berghei-infected mouse RBCs. This new model reliably measured both P. yoelii and P. berghei parasitemia (R2 = 0.9916). Additional rounds of training data to incorporate variances due to length of Giemsa staining and type of microscopes, etc., have produced a generalizable model, meeting WHO competency level 1 for the subcategory of parasite counting using independent microscopes. Reliable, automated analyses of blood-stage parasitemia will facilitate rapid and consistent evaluation of novel vaccines and antimalarials across laboratories in an easily accessible invivo malaria model.

Promoting the Public Health by Medical Image Analysis and Disease Diagnosis

Public health has improved as a result of data analysis tools since they make disease identification early and simple. In the absence of data analysis methods, medical professionals' judgement is the only means of identifying the illness. This could be problematic in places without access to skilled medical professionals, which could ultimately result in the illness patient's death. Data analysis techniques are currently being applied in numerous medical disease detection situations in order to address the aforementioned challenges. The methods for detecting blood disorders are presented in this article. This model detects blood disorder disease using a blood smear in addition to a clinical report. The sick patients are classified using an ML classifier after an ML model extracts information from blood smear images and combines them with clinical features.

Elephant herding optimized features-based fast RCNN for classifying leukemia stages.

Leukemia is a cancer that develops in the bone marrow and blood that is brought on by an excessive generation of abnormal white blood cells. This disease damages deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), which is associated with immature cells, particularly white blood cells. It is time-consuming and requires enhanced accuracy for radiologists to diagnose acute leukemia cells. To overcome this issue, we have studied the use of a novel proposed LEU-EHO NET. LEU-EHO NET has been proposed for classifying blood smear images based on leukemia-free and leukemia-infected images. Initially, the input blood smear images are pre-processed using two techniques: normalization and cropping black edges in images. The pre-processed images are then subjected to MobileNet for feature extraction. After that, Elephant Herding Optimization (EHO) is used to select the relevant feature from the retrieved characteristics. Finally, Faster RCNN is trained with the selected features to perform the classification task and discriminate between Normal and Abnormal. The total accuracy of the proposed LEU-EHO NET is 99.30%. The proposed LEU-EHO NET model enhances the overall accuracy by 0.69%, 16.21%, 1.10%, 1.71%, and 1.38% better than Inception v3 XGBoost, VGGNet, DNN, SVM and MobilenetV2 respectively. The approach needs to be improved so that overlapped cells can be segmented more accurately. Additionally, future work might improve classification accuracy by utilizing different deep learning models.

MULTIFRACTAL ANALYSIS OF POLARIZATION MAPS OF ELLIPTICITY OF MICROSCOPIC IMAGES OF BLOOD SMEARS AND DIFFERENTIAL DIAGNOSIS OF THYROID GLAND PATHOLOGY

Among the numerous biomedical diagnostic applications of the soft matter structure,Mueller- matrix polarimetry of the optical anisotropy of biological tissues occupies animportant place. Various Mueller- matrix polarimetry systems have been developed toimplement the diagnostic tasks.The aim of the study – to conduct a comparative analysis of the effectiveness of themultifractal processing method of polarization ellipticity maps of digital microscopicimages of supramolecular protein networks of polycrystalline blood smears in orderto determine new objective criteria (markers) of digital laser histological differentialdiagnosis of the thyroid gland pathology.Material and methods. Four observation groups were formed: 1. Control group – healthydonors (51 people). 2. Patients with nodular goiter (51 patients). 3. Patients with autoimmunethyroiditis (51 patients). 4. Patients with papillary cancer (51 patients). A comparative analysisof the effectiveness of the statistical and multifractal processing methods of polarizationellipticity maps of digital microscopic images of supramolecular protein networks ofpolycrystalline blood smears was carried out in order to determine new objective criteria(markers) of digital laser histological differential diagnosis of the thyroid pathology. Results. A comprehensive statistical and multifractal analysis of polarization ellipticitymaps of experimental blood samples of donors and patients with nodular goiter,autoimmune thyroiditis, and papillary cancer was performed. Objective statistical andmultifractal markers for differential diagnosis of the thyroid gland pathology weredetermined. An excellent level (~96 %-98 %) of the balanced accuracy of the multifractalanalysis method of polarization maps of blood for minimally invasive differentiation ofpathological conditions has been demonstrated.Conclusions. 1. The most optimal statistical markers of the method of mapping ellipticitymaps of polarization of digital microscopic images of blood smears were found to bethe most optimal, and a good diagnostic capacity of diagnosis (~87.3 %-88.3 %) anda satisfactory level (~78.4 %-81.4 %) of differentiation of thyroid pathology wereestablished. 2. Multifractal markers of the mapping ellipticity maps method of polarizationof digital microscopic images of blood smears were found to be the most optimal and anexcellent level (~96 %-98 %) of the balanced accuracy of differential diagnosis of thethyroid gland pathologies was established.

Image cropping for malaria parasite detection on heterogeneous data

Malaria is a deadly disease of significant concern for the international community. It is an infectious disease caused by a Plasmodium spp. parasite and transmitted by the bite of an infected female Anopheles mosquito. The parasite multiplies in the liver and then destroys the person's red blood cells until it reaches the severe stage, leading to death. The most used tools for diagnosing this disease are the microscope and the rapid diagnostic test (RDT), which have limitations preventing control of the disease. Computer vision technologies present alternatives by providing the means for early detection of this disease before it reaches the severe stage, facilitating treatment and saving patients. In this article, we suggest deep learning methods for earlier and more accurate detection of malaria parasites with high generalization capabilities using microscopic images of blood smears from many heterogeneous patients. These techniques are based on an image preprocessing method that mitigates some of the challenges associated with the variety of red cell characteristics due to patient diversity and other artifacts present in the data.For the study, we collected 65,970 microscopic images from 876 different patients to form a dataset of 33,007 images with a variety that enables us to create models with a high level of generalization. Three types of convolutional neural networks were used, namely Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), DenseNet, and LeNet-5, and the highest classification accuracy on the test data was 97.50% found with the DenseNet model.

Computer-Aided Diagnosis Systems for Automatic Malaria Parasite Detection and Classification: A Systematic Review

Malaria is a disease that affects millions of people worldwide with a consistent mortality rate. The light microscope examination is the gold standard for detecting infection by malaria parasites. Still, it is limited by long timescales and requires a high level of expertise from pathologists. Early diagnosis of this disease is necessary to achieve timely and effective treatment, which avoids tragic consequences, thus leading to the development of computer-aided diagnosis systems based on artificial intelligence (AI) for the detection and classification of blood cells infected with the malaria parasite in blood smear images. Such systems involve an articulated pipeline, culminating in the use of machine learning and deep learning approaches, the main branches of AI. Here, we present a systematic literature review of recent research on the use of automated algorithms to identify and classify malaria parasites in blood smear images. Based on the PRISMA 2020 criteria, a search was conducted using several electronic databases including PubMed, Scopus, and arXiv by applying inclusion/exclusion filters. From the 606 initial records identified, 135 eligible studies were selected and analyzed. Many promising results were achieved, and some mobile and web applications were developed to address resource and expertise limitations in developing countries.

Biophysical profiling of red blood cells from thin-film blood smears using deep learning

Microscopic inspection of thin-film blood smears is widely used to identify red blood cell (RBC) pathologies, including malaria parasitism and hemoglobinopathies, such as sickle cell disease and thalassemia. Emerging research indicates that non-pathologic changes in RBCs can also be detected in images, such as deformability and morphological changes resulting from the storage lesion. In transfusion medicine, cell deformability is a potential biomarker for the quality of donated RBCs. However, a major impediment to the clinical translation of this biomarker is the difficulty associated with performing this measurement. To address this challenge, we developed an approach for biophysical profiling of RBCs based on cell images in thin-film blood smears. We hypothesize that subtle cellular changes are evident in blood smear images, but this information is inaccessible to human expert labellers. To test this hypothesis, we developed a deep learning strategy to analyze Giemsa-stained blood smears to assess the subtle morphologies indicative of RBC deformability and storage-based degradation. Specifically, we prepared thin-film blood smears from 27 RBC samples (9 donors evaluated at 3 storage time points) and imaged them using high-resolution microscopy. Using this dataset, we trained a convolutional neural network to evaluate image-based morphological features related to cell deformability. The prediction of donor deformability is strongly correlated to the microfluidic scores and can be used to categorize images into specific deformability groups with high accuracy. We also used this model to evaluate differences in RBC morphology resulting from cold storage. Together, our results demonstrate that deep learning models can detect subtle cellular morphology differences resulting from deformability and cold storage. This result suggests the potential to assess donor blood quality from thin-film blood smears, which can be acquired ubiquitously in clinical workflows.

Blood Cancer Identification on Peripheral Blood Smear (PBS) Images Using HSV Feature Extraction

Blood cancer is a category of diseases that have an impact on the development and operation of blood cells. Due to the complexity and diversity of these diseases, proper diagnosis is required before starting treatment. Medical imaging techniques have undergone significant advances in recent years, especially in peripheral blood smear (PBS) image processing. The aim of this study was to uncover how important the extraction of PBS image features is for the diagnosis of blood cancer. Feature extraction is essential to detect anomalies in blood cells in terms of blood cancer detection. The method used is feature extraction based on hue and saturation values (HSV) and uses Machine Support Vector Machine (SVM) machine learning algorithms in classifying malignant and benign PBS images. PBS image data used in this study was 100 images, consisting of 50 malignant PBS images, and 50 benign PBS images. Through the application of HSV feature extraction techniques and PBS image analysis, SVM algorithms can uncover latent indicators of blood cancer and facilitate timely and precise diagnosis. With the SVM technique, classification accuracy can be achieved by 92%. These results demonstrate the potential effectiveness of this feature extraction method. Extraction of HSV features may alter the diagnosis of blood cancer with additional research and application in clinical settings.

Statistical Analysis of Features for Detecting Leukemia

In this age of digital microscopy, image processing, statistical analysis, categorization, and systems for decision-making have become essential tools for medical diagnostics research. By visualizing and analyzing images, clinicians can identify anomalies in intracellular structure. Leukemia is a cancerous condition marked by an unregulated increase in aberrant white blood cells (WBCs). Recognizing acute leukemia tumor cells in blood smear images (BSI) is a challenging assignment. Image segmentation is regarded as the most significant step in the automated identification of this disease. The innovative concavity-based segmentation algorithm is employed in this study to segment WBC in sub-images from the ALLIDB2 database. The concave endpoints and elliptical features are used in the segmentation step of convex-shaped cell images. The procedure involves the extraction of contour evidence, which detects the visible section of each object, and contour estimation, which corresponds to the final object’s contours. Following the identification of the cells and their internal structure by concavity-based segmentation, the cells are categorized based on their morphological and statistical features. The method was evaluated using a public dataset meant to test classification and segmentation approaches. The statistical tool SPSS is used to independently check the significance of derived features. For classification, significant features are passed into machine learning techniques such as support vector machines (SVM), k-nearest neighbor (KNN), neural networks (NN), decision trees (DT), and Nave Bayes (NB). With an AUC of 98.9% and a total accuracy of 95%, the neural network model performed better. We advocate using the neural network model to identify acute leukemia cells based on its accuracy.

Acute Leukemia Subtype Recognition in Blood Smear Images with Machine Learning

Acute leukemia is a swiftly progressing blood cancer affecting white blood cells which poses a significant threat to the immune system and often leads to fatal outcomes if not detected and treated promptly. The current manual diagnostic method, being time-consuming and prone to errors, necessitates an urgent shift toward a comprehensive automated system. This paper presents an innovative approach to automatically identify acute leukemia cells and their subtypes by analyzing microscopic blood smear images. The proposed methodology involves the segmentation of clustered lymphocytes, isolation of nuclei, and extraction of diverse features from each nucleus. A random forest classifier is then trained to categorize nuclei into healthy or cancerous, with further precision in classifying cancerous nuclei into specific subtypes. The method achieves an impressive 97% accuracy across all evaluations, holding profound implications for pathologists and medical practitioners in their decision-making processes

Explainable Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning Methods for the Detection of Sickle Cell by Capturing the Digital Images of Blood Smears

Explainable Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning Methods for the Detection of Sickle Cell by Capturing the Digital Images of Blood Smears