Patent attributes
A method for segmenting stained leukocytes in blood smears includes the following steps: the pixels of the digital images taken of the blood smears are allocated to one of at least three pixel classes according to their chromaticity values; the chromaticity values of all pixels of the image are subjected to the same transformation with which the pixels allocated to the class of the image background appear at least almost white; a transformation of the stained image obtained takes place into an alternative color space, which represents the hue, color saturation and color intensity separately, and hue, color saturation and color intensity of all pixels are ascertained; a probability value is calculated for each pixel for its association to a leukocyte, the probability value corresponding to the product of the probability value for the hue of the leukocyte nucleus with at least one further probability value; then these probability values are defined with reference to previously ascertained and defined associations, and the pixels with a high value of the product of the probability values are considered as belonging to a leukocyte.
