Ochoa David, Redondo Tomás, Moreno-Rueda Gregorio
1 Departamento de Etología y Conservación de la Biodiversidad, Estación Biológica de Doñana, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Avenida Américo Vespucio s/n, 41092 Sevilla, Spain.
2 Departamento de Zoología, Universidad de Granada, E-18071, Granada, Spain.
Physiol Biochem Zool. 2019 Mar/Apr;92(2):206-210. doi: 10.1086/702666.
Hematological profiles are routinely used to assess the health status of animals. Several methods have been developed for blood cell counting, but they are typically expensive and/or time-consuming. Here, we present a free image-processing software, Mizutama, developed for counting cells in photographs of blood smears. Mizutama uses the thresholding method to transform original photographs into grayscale trinary images. Following a number of parameters, Mizutama searches in the image for cells of a given size, with a nucleus size relative to cytoplasm surface area. The software is not only easy, versatile, and intuitive to handle but also fast when counting cells in photographs. Moreover, we show that it is highly accurate, failing to detect only ca. 1.4% of avian red cells in ordinary microscopic photographs. The Mizutama application may greatly facilitate the counting of erythrocytes and other blood cells in physiological studies, saving time and money.
血液学指标通常用于评估动物的健康状况。已经开发了几种血细胞计数方法，但它们通常昂贵且/或耗时。在这里，我们展示了一款免费的图像处理软件Mizutama，它是为在血涂片照片中计数细胞而开发的。Mizutama使用阈值化方法将原始照片转换为灰度三值图像。根据一些参数，Mizutama在图像中搜索给定大小的细胞，其细胞核大小与细胞质表面积相关。该软件不仅易于操作、用途广泛且直观，而且在对照片中的细胞进行计数时速度很快。此外，我们表明它非常准确，在普通显微镜照片中仅约1.4%的鸟类红细胞未被检测到。Mizutama应用程序可能会极大地促进生理研究中红细胞和其他血细胞的计数，节省时间和金钱。
