Title :
Identification of tuberculosis bacillus in direct smears with low image quality
Author :
Morales-Carbajal, C. ; Bravo-Zanoguera, M.E. ; Vera-Perez, M. ; Arriola, H. ; Lopez-Avitia, R. ; Reyna-Carranza, MA
Author_Institution :
Univ. Autonoma de Baja California, Mexicali, Mexico
Abstract :
A digital image processing method for detecting tuberculosis (TB) is presented. First, a reference representing the specialists´ determination of TB bacilli on a digital image is validated. And the noise in the signal intensities is evaluated to quantify the image capture system. A simple algorithm is proposed for identification of the bacillus, by means of only thresholding in the color channels. This simple method causes a sensitivity of 86.08% and specificity of 92.39% in classifying the pixels of poor quality images. Although, there are methods with a better sensitivity and specificity for the detection of bacillus, these have often more complex processes and use input images with a better contrast. Our results show a potential to obtain an automatic detection of TB bacillus.
Keywords :
diseases; image colour analysis; lung; medical image processing; microorganisms; pneumodynamics; statistical analysis; analysis of variance; color channels; digital filter; digital image processing; histogram thresholding; tuberculosis bacillus; Analysis of variance; Digital images; Diseases; Histograms; Image processing; Image quality; Microorganisms; Microscopy; Pixel; Sensitivity and specificity; analysis of variance; detection of TB; digital filter; histogram thresholding; image processing;
Conference_Titel :
Health Care Exchange (PAHCE), 2010 Pan American
Conference_Location :
Lima
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4244-6291-9
DOI :
10.1109/PAHCE.2010.5474609