DEVELOPMENT OF A PROTOCOL FOR SCREENING LEUKEMIA FROM THE MICROSCOPIC IMAGES ACQUIRED FROM BLOOD SMEAR

Sanath Kumar Nayak, Niranjana Sampathila

Abstract: Leukemia is a cancer, generally, leukemia is caused due to the over production of abnormal white blood cells (WBC). However, the abnormal white blood cells do not function the same way that the normal white cell does. These abnormal cells enter the blood stream and spreads throughout the body. Generally the detection of leukemia is done manually using a manual microscope by observing the white blood cells. The manual process consumes a lot of time and most of the times it leads to inaccurate result by faulty detection due to human error. As in remote areas, diagnosis of certain disease like leukemia is a challenging task as it requires a sophisticated lab setup with good clinical experts. The developed system using a USB digital Microscope captures the image from the blood smear with 40x magnification. Raspberry pi3 module is used for processing these captured images and later they are displayed on a monitor screen. Thus the developed hand held device along with image processing plays a major role in modern digital tele-pathology, and are expected to help in screening of blood cells in the remote area.

Keywords: Leukemia, Red Blood Cells, White Blood Cells, Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15623/ijret.2016.0534002