Facultad de Matemáticas, Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, C.P. 97119, Mérida, Mexico.
Comput Methods Programs Biomed. 2013 Dec;112(3):633-9. doi: 10.1016/j.cmpb.2013.07.013. Epub 2013 Sep 9.
Chagas disease is a tropical parasitic disease caused by the flagellate protozoan Trypanosoma cruzi (T. cruzi) and currently affecting large portions of the Americas. One of the standard laboratory methods to determine the presence of the parasite is by direct visualization in blood smears stained with some colorant. This method is time-consuming, requires trained microscopists and is prone to human mistakes. In this article we propose a novel algorithm for the automatic detection of T. cruzi parasites, in microscope digital images obtained from peripheral blood smears treated with Wright's stain. Our algorithm achieved a sensitivity of 0.98 and specificity of 0.85 when evaluated against a dataset of 120 test images. Experimental results show the versatility of the method for parasitemia determination.
恰加斯病是一种热带寄生虫病，由鞭毛原生动物克氏锥虫（Trypanosoma cruzi，T. cruzi）引起，目前影响着美洲的大部分地区。确定寄生虫存在的标准实验室方法之一是通过用某种染料染色的血涂片直接观察。这种方法既耗时，又需要经过训练的显微镜专家，而且容易出错。在本文中，我们提出了一种新的算法，用于自动检测用 Wright 染色处理的外周血涂片的显微镜数字图像中的 T. cruzi 寄生虫。我们的算法在评估 120 张测试图像的数据集时，灵敏度为 0.98，特异性为 0.85。实验结果表明该方法在寄生虫血症测定方面具有通用性。
