A timed tally counter for microscopic examination of thick blood smears in malaria studies

Background Despite many technological advances for malaria parasite detection (e.g. high resolution image acquisition), microscopic reading of thick blood smear (TBS) remains the gold standard. Even though available in low technology environment, the microscopy of TBS is slow and time consuming. Moreover microscopy may induce errors at many levels and has no quality control. Methods A electronic extension of the mechanical tally counter is proposed. In addition to the counting process it includes the process of counting itself that relies on the time elapsed between two successive pressures of the counting button leading to a timed tally counter (TTC). The microscopist performs the reading with the specific instruction starting by counting, in each high power fields, leucocytes first and then parasites. The time-stamp of all pressures of counting buttons are recorded along with the nature of the count. The data are recorded internally in CSV format and are exportable. The detection of HPFs locations and leukocyte/parasite counts per HPFs is performed through a hidden semi-Markov model (with outliers) allowing both to take into account the known distribution of leukocyte per HPFs (using a negative binomial distribution) and the pauses and hesitation of the microscopist during the reading. Parameters are estimated via the expectation-maximization algorithm. Hyper-parameters are calibrated using expert annotations. Forward/backward recursions are used to obtain the HPFs locations. Results This approach provides richer data at no extra cost. It has been demonstrated that the method can derive parasites per HPF, leukocytes per HPF, and parasite/leukocyte ratio with robust non-parametric confidence intervals. Moreover a direct digital data entry leads to a less expensive process and decreased time-consuming and error-prone manual data entry. Lastly the TTC allows detecting possible protocol break during reading and prevents the risk of fraud. Discussion and conclusion Introducing a programmed digital device in the data acquisition of TBS reading gives the opportunity to develop easily new (possible adaptive) reading protocols that will be easily followed by the reader since they will be embedded directly in the device. With the TTC the reader only has to read HPFs, counting leukocytes first and parasites second, and the counter will beep when the protocol is completed.