A high resolution chromosome image processor for study purposes, NIRS-1000:CHROMO STUDY, and algorithm developing to classify radiation induced aberrations.

Since 1989 we have promoted a project to develop an automated scoring system of radiation induced chromosome aberrations. As a first step, a high resolution image processing system for study purposes, NIRS-1000:CHROMO STUDY, has been developed. It is composed of: (1) CHROMO MARKER whose main purpose is to mark on images to make image data base, (2) CHROMO ALGO whose purpose is algorithm development, and (3) METAPHASE RANKER whose purposes are metaphase finding and ranking with a high power objective lens. However, METAPHASE RANKER is presently under development. The system utilizes a high definition video system so as to realize the best spatial resolution that is achievable with an optical microscope using an objective lens (x 100, numerical aperture 1.4). The video camera has 1024 effective scan lines to realize 0.1 microns sampling on a specimen. The system resolution achieved on the hard copy is less than 0.3 microns on a specimen. A preliminary algorithm has been developed to classify the aberrations on the system using projection information of gray level. The preliminary test results on excellent 10 metaphases show that the correct classification ratio is 92.7%, that the detection rate of the aberrations is 83.3% and that the false positive rate is 6.1%.