Removing defocused objects from single focal plane scans of cytological slides.

We reach an overall sensitivity of 96.08% and a specificity of 99.63% for identifying defocused objects. Applied on ninety cytological slides, the developed classifiers automatically removed 2.50% of the objects acquired during scanning, which otherwise would have interfered the examination. Even if not all objects are acquired in focus, computer-assisted DNA image cytometry still identified more diagnostically or prognostically relevant objects compared to manual DNA image cytometry. At the same time, the workload for the expert is reduced dramatically.