Automatic classification of cells in microscopic fecal images using convolutional neural networks

Biosci Rep. 2019 Apr 5;39(4):BSR20182100. doi: 10.1042/BSR20182100. Print 2019 Apr 30.

Abstract

The analysis of fecal-type components for clinical diagnosis is important. The main examination involves the counting of red blood cells (RBCs), white blood cells (WBCs), and molds under the microscopic. With the development of machine vision, some vision-based detection schemes have been proposed. However, these methods have a single target for detection, with low detection efficiency and low accuracy. We proposed an algorithm to identify the visible image of fecal composition based on intelligent deep learning. The algorithm mainly includes region proposal and candidate recognition. In the process of segmentation, we proposed a morphology extraction algorithm in a complex background. As for the candidate recognition, we proposed a new convolutional neural network (CNN) architecture based on Inception-v3 and principal component analysis (PCA). This method achieves high-average Precision of 90.7%, which is better than the other mainstream CNN models. Finally, the images within the rectangle marks were obtained. The total time for detection of an image was roughly 1200 ms. The algorithm proposed in the present paper can be integrated into an automatic fecal detection system.

Keywords: cell object detection; deep learning; fecal microscopic images; image recognition; pattern recognition.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Colony Count, Microbial / methods*
  • Erythrocyte Count / methods*
  • Erythrocytes / cytology
  • Feces / cytology*
  • Feces / microbiology*
  • Humans
  • Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / methods*
  • Leukocyte Count / methods*
  • Leukocytes / cytology
  • Neural Networks, Computer
  • Principal Component Analysis / methods