The paper attempts to investigate the possibility of developing leprosy screening methods through image analysis. The conventional diagnosis of leprosy is typically based on clinical evaluation and is highly subjective. Skin smears are used to screen patients for leprosy. The lab personnel used the smears to get morphological information viz bacilli shape and the clusters for grading the severity of the disease. The examination consumes time and demands skilled technicians especially when it is of a low bacterial load or even negative, as bacilli per field of view for the entire smear which consists of around 500 fields. Hence, the Image processing workflow is designed in detecting and counting the number of Mycobacterium leprae. The workflow involves two methods (i) Object detection through thresholding and (ii) Contour detection based on filtering. Finally, the Mycobacterium leprae are counted using the generated mask or contour to report the presence or absence of the bacilli and the level of severity of the disease.
LA - ENG M3 - Book chapter N2 -The paper attempts to investigate the possibility of developing leprosy screening methods through image analysis. The conventional diagnosis of leprosy is typically based on clinical evaluation and is highly subjective. Skin smears are used to screen patients for leprosy. The lab personnel used the smears to get morphological information viz bacilli shape and the clusters for grading the severity of the disease. The examination consumes time and demands skilled technicians especially when it is of a low bacterial load or even negative, as bacilli per field of view for the entire smear which consists of around 500 fields. Hence, the Image processing workflow is designed in detecting and counting the number of Mycobacterium leprae. The workflow involves two methods (i) Object detection through thresholding and (ii) Contour detection based on filtering. Finally, the Mycobacterium leprae are counted using the generated mask or contour to report the presence or absence of the bacilli and the level of severity of the disease.
PB - CRC Press PY - 2024 TI - Leprosy Screening Through Image Processing Methods ER -