Patent ID: 7979212
Filing Date: 2011-07-12
Classification: G01N,G06K,G06T,G16H,Y10S

Abstract:
1. An automated method for mitosis cell analysis, comprising: analyzing luminance values from a plurality of pixels in a digital image of a biological tissue sample comprising one or more human cancer cells to which a chemical compound comprising a Haematoxylin and Eosin stain has been applied and adjusting the luminance values if necessary, to identify a plurality of cells; segmenting the identified plurality of cells using morphological parameters to remove non-mitotic cells; identifying a plurality of mitotic cells from the segmented plurality of cells; and classifying and displaying the identified plurality of mitotic cells with a pre-determined classification scheme to create a medical diagnosis or prognosis; wherein the segmenting step includes: calculating a first area for a cell from the identified plurality of cells using a thresholding operation on a plurality of pixels in the cell; calculating a second area for the cell using a plurality of luminosity values calculated for the cell; and determining whether a ratio of the ((first area)/(second area)) is more than a pre-determined segmenting value, and if so, identifying the cell as a non-mitotic cell and removing the cell from consideration in the identified plurality of cells; wherein the classifying step includes: extracting cell features from the identified plurality of mitotic cells; and classifying the identified plurality of mitotic cells using a trained artificial automated neural network; wherein the analyzing step includes a pre-processing procedure using a computing device comprising: determining a minimum pixel intensity in a plurality of color planes in the digital image; and adjusting luminance parameters using the determined minimum pixel intensity within one or more determined areas of interest to create one or more adjusted areas of interest to contrast enhance pixels within the digital image.