Nissl Stained Rat Brain Cell Image Analysis Post Exposure to Electromagnetic Fields Using Image Processing Techniques

Studies have shown that mobile phones which emit high-frequency electromagnetic fields have a bleak effect on the human brain. However, the results are found to be inconsistent pertaining to the exact nature of thump it causes with respect to the changes in the brain cell morphology, cell structure, cell shape, cell size, nuclei count and apoptosis. The paper intends to demonstrate novel techniques developed to elucidate the effect of electromagnetic fields (EMF) exposure on neuronal cells of post-natal rats as subjects. The brain cell images of the subjects, prior and post exposure to the electromagnetic fields (EMF) are obtained using the Cresyl Violet (Nissl) Staining method. The images are then subjected to analysis using pre-processing techniques such as average filtering combined with median filtering to denoise the Nissl stained cell images, image enhancement techniques like local enhancement using CLAHE algorithm for abating the pixel intensity variations. The image procured after pre-processing is then segmented using a hybrid segmentation technique that integrates adaptive single seed region growing and threshold based segmentation to obtain separate cells and analyzes them for apoptosis. A novel technique using distance transform with maxima propagation has been developed for automated cell counting. The end results intend to limn the accuracy of the developed cell counting and segmentation techniques over the manual approach. And also, to delineate the impact of electromagnetic fields (EMF) radiations beyond a threshold value at the neuronal level.