title: White blood cell segmentation by circle detection using electromagnetism-like optimization.
abstract: Medical imaging is a relevant field of application of image processing algorithms. In particular, the analysis of white blood cell (WBC) images has engaged researchers from fields of medicine and computer vision alike. Since WBCs can be approximated by a quasicircular form, a circular detector algorithm may be successfully applied. This paper presents an algorithm for the automatic detection of white blood cells embedded into complicated and cluttered smear images that considers the complete process as a circle detection problem. The approach is based on a nature-inspired technique called the electromagnetism-like optimization (EMO) algorithm which is a heuristic method that follows electromagnetism principles for solving complex optimization problems. The proposed approach uses an objective function which measures the resemblance of a candidate circle to an actual WBC. Guided by the values of such objective function, the set of encoded candidate circles are evolved by using EMO, so that they can fit into the actual blood cells contained in the edge map of the image. Experimental results from blood cell images with a varying range of complexity are included to validate the efficiency of the proposed technique regarding detection, robustness, and stability.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Electrónica, Universidad de Guadalajara, CUCEI, Avenida Revolución 1500, 44430 Guadalajara, JAL, Mexico. erik.cuevas@cucei.udg.mx
authors.forename: Erik
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Cuevas
authors.forename: Diego
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Oliva
authors.forename: Margarita
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Díaz
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Zaldivar
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Pérez-Cisneros
authors.forename: Gonzalo
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Pajares
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D003952:Diagnostic Imaging / Q000379:methods; D055590:Electromagnetic Phenomena; D060733:Electromagnetic Radiation; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods; D007958:Leukocyte Count / Q000379:methods*; D007962:Leukocytes / Q000166:cytology*; D015233:Models, Statistical; D015203:Reproducibility of Results