Background:
White Blood Cell (WBC) image segmentation plays a key role in cell
morphology analysis. However, WBC segmentation is still a challenging task due to the diversity
of WBCs under different staining conditions.
Objective:
In this paper, we propose a novel WBC segmentation method based on color component
combination and contour fitting to segment WBC images accurately.
Methods:
Specifically, the proposed method first uses color component combination and image
thresholding to achieve nucleus segmentation, then uses a color prior to remove image background,
and extracts the initial WBC contour via Canny edge detection, and finally judges and
closes the unclosed WBC contour by contour fitting. Accordingly, cytoplasm segmentation is
achieved by subtracting the nucleus region from the WBC region.
Results:
Experimental results on 100 WBC images under rapid staining condition and 50 WBC
images under standard staining condition showed that the proposed method improved segmentation
accuracy of white blood cells under rapid and standard staining conditions.
Conclusion:
The proposed color component combination and contour fitting is effective in WBC
segmentation task.
