title: Counting White Blood Cells from a Blood Smear Using Fourier Ptychographic Microscopy.
abstract: White blood cell (WBC) count is a valuable metric for assisting with diagnosis or prognosis of various diseases such as coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes, or infection. Counting WBCs can be done either manually or automatically. Automatic methods are capable of counting a large number of cells to give a statistically more accurate reading of the WBC count of a sample, but the specialized equipment tends to be expensive. Manual methods are inexpensive since they only involve a conventional light microscope setup. However, it is more laborious and error-prone because the small field-of-view (FOV) of the microscope necessitates mechanical scanning of a specimen for counting an adequate number of WBCs. Here, we investigate the use of Fourier ptychographic microscopy (FPM) to bypass these issues of the manual methods. With a 2x objective, FPM can provide a FOV of 120 mm2 with enhanced resolution comparable to that of a 20x objective, which is adequate for non-differentially counting WBCs in just one FOV. A specialist was able to count the WBCs in FPM images with 100% accuracy compared to the count as determined from conventional microscope images. An automatic counting algorithm was also developed to identify WBCs from FPM's captured images with 95% accuracy, paving the way for a cost-effective WBC counting setup with the advantages of both the automatic and manual counting methods.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Jaebum
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Chung
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Xiaoze
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Ou
authors.affiliation: Division of Dermatology, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Rajan P
authors.initials: RP
authors.lastname: Kulkarni
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, United States of America; Department of Bioengineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Changhuei
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Yang
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D006801:Humans; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional; D007958:Leukocyte Count / Q000379:methods*; D007962:Leukocytes / Q000166:cytology*; D008853:Microscopy / Q000379:methods*