Automatic Identification of Human Erythrocytes in Microscopic Fecal Specimens

Traditional fecal erythrocyte detection is performed via a manual operation that is unsuitable because it depends significantly on the expertise of individual inspectors. To recognize human erythrocytes automatically and precisely, automatic segmentation is very important for extraction of characteristics. In addition, multiple recognition algorithms are also essential. This paper proposes an algorithm based on morphological segmentation and a fuzzy neural network. The morphological segmentation process comprises three operational steps: top-hat transformation, Otsu’s method, and image binarization. Following initial screening by area and circularity, fuzzy c-means clustering and the neural network algorithms are used for secondary screening. Subsequently, the erythrocytes are screened by combining the results of five images obtained at different focal lengths. Experimental results show that even when the illumination, noise pollution, and position of the erythrocytes are different, they are all segmented and labeled accurately by the proposed method. Thus, the proposed method is robust even in images with significant amounts of noise.