Mui J K, Fu K S, Bacus J W
J Histochem Cytochem. 1977 Jul;25(7):633-40. doi: 10.1177/25.7.894005.
The classification of white blood cell neutrophils into band neutrophils (bands) and segmented neutrophils (segs) is a subproblem of the white blood cell differential count. This classification problem is not well defined for at least two reasons: (a) there are no unique quantitative definitions for bands and segs and (b) existing definitions use the shape of the nucleus as the only discriminating criterion. When cells are classified on a slide, decisions are made from the two-dimensional views of these three-dimensional cells. A problem arises because the exact shape of the nucleus becomes indeterminate when the nucleus overlaps so that the filament is hidden. To assess the importance of this problem, this paper quantitates the classification errors due to overlapped nuclei (ON). The results indicate that, using only neutrophils without ON, the classification accuracy is 89%. For neutrophils with ON, the classification accuracy is 65%. This suggests a classification strategy of first classifying neutrophils into three categories: (a) bands without ON, (b) segs without ON and (c) neutrophils with ON. Category III can then be further classified into segs and bands by other stretegies.
将白细胞中性粒细胞分为带状中性粒细胞（杆状核粒细胞）和分叶核中性粒细胞是白细胞分类计数中的一个子问题。至少有两个原因使得这个分类问题没有得到很好的界定：（a）对于杆状核粒细胞和分叶核中性粒细胞没有唯一的定量定义；（b）现有的定义仅将细胞核的形状作为唯一的判别标准。当在载玻片上对细胞进行分类时，是从这些三维细胞的二维视图做出判断的。当细胞核重叠以至于细丝被隐藏时，细胞核的确切形状变得不确定，问题就出现了。为了评估这个问题的重要性，本文对由于细胞核重叠（ON）导致的分类错误进行了量化。结果表明，仅使用没有细胞核重叠的中性粒细胞时，分类准确率为89%。对于有细胞核重叠的中性粒细胞，分类准确率为65%。这表明了一种分类策略，即首先将中性粒细胞分为三类：（a）没有细胞核重叠的杆状核粒细胞；（b）没有细胞核重叠的分叶核中性粒细胞；（c）有细胞核重叠的中性粒细胞。然后可以通过其他策略将第三类进一步分为分叶核中性粒细胞和杆状核粒细胞。
