Conference Proceedings

Abstract

Malaria is a serious global health problem, and rapid, accurate diagnosis is required to control the disease. An image processing algorithm to automate the diagnosis of malaria in blood images is developed in this project. The image classification system is designed to positively identify malaria parasites present in thin blood smears, and differentiate the species of malaria. Images are acquired using a charge-coupled device camera connected to a light microscope. Morphological and novel threshold selection techniques are used to identify erythrocytes (red blood cells) and possible parasites present on microscopic slides. Image features based on colour, texture and the geometry of the cells and parasites are generated, as well as features that make use of a priori knowledge of the classification problem and mimic features used by human technicians. The first order features provides the basic mathematical ranges for different types of parasites. A two-stage tree classifier distinguishes between true and false positives, and then diagnoses the species (Plasmodium falciparum, P. vivax, P. ovale or P. malariae) of the infection. Malaria samples obtained from the various biomedical research facilities are used for training and testing of the system.