White Blood Cells Counting Via Vector Field Convolution Nuclei Segmentation

Simone Porcu, Andrea Loddo, Lorenzo Putzu, Cecilia Di Ruberto

2018

Abstract

Haematological procedures like analysis, counting and classification of White Blood Cells (WBCs) are very helpful in the medical field, in order to recognize a pathology, e.g., WBCs analysis leukaemia correlation. Expert technicians manually perform these procedures, therefore, they are influenced by their tiredness and subjectivity. Their automation is still an open issue. Our proposal aims to replicate every single step of the haematologists’ job with a semi-automatic system. The main targets of this work are to decrease the time needed for an analysis and to improve the efficiency of the procedure. It is based on the Vector Field Convolution (VFC) to describe cells edges, going beyond more classic methods like the active contour model. This approach is crucial to face the WBCs clumps and overlaps segmentation issue. To sum up, we defined a system that is able to recognise the leukocytes, to differentiate them from the other blood cells and, finally, to divide the overlapping leukocytes. Experimental results obtained on three public datasets showed that the method is accurate and robust, outperforming the state of the art methods for cells clumps identification and cells counting.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Porcu S., Loddo A., Putzu L. and Di Ruberto C. (2018). White Blood Cells Counting Via Vector Field Convolution Nuclei Segmentation. In Proceedings of the 13th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications (VISIGRAPP 2018) - Volume 4: VISAPP; ISBN 978-989-758-290-5, SciTePress, pages 227-234. DOI: 10.5220/0006723202270234

in Bibtex Style

@conference{visapp18,
author={Simone Porcu and Andrea Loddo and Lorenzo Putzu and Cecilia Di Ruberto},
title={White Blood Cells Counting Via Vector Field Convolution Nuclei Segmentation},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 13th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications (VISIGRAPP 2018) - Volume 4: VISAPP},
year={2018},
pages={227-234},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0006723202270234},
isbn={978-989-758-290-5},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 13th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications (VISIGRAPP 2018) - Volume 4: VISAPP
TI - White Blood Cells Counting Via Vector Field Convolution Nuclei Segmentation
SN - 978-989-758-290-5
AU - Porcu S.
AU - Loddo A.
AU - Putzu L.
AU - Di Ruberto C.
PY - 2018
SP - 227
EP - 234
DO - 10.5220/0006723202270234
PB - SciTePress