Cell Recognition by Image Processing : Recognition of Dead or Living Plant Cells by Neural Network

This paper deals with determination of whether protoplasts are alive or not. The protoplasts are plant cells which are removed cell walls, and have been used for cell fusion to generate new species of plants. Cell fusion uses living protoplasts, and therefore, a method of life or death determination for protoplasts is necessary. FDA (fluorescein diacetate) has been used for this purpose. However, FDA has not been applied for cell fusion because it is toxic to protoplasts. In this Paper, we propose a new harmless method for the above determination using the image processing technique and an artificial neural network. The proposed method measures shape and colors of protoplasts using image processing for sensory information. The neural network determines whether protoplasts are living or not based on the sensory information. Experiments were performed in order to show the effectiveness of the proposed method. As the result, the proposed method is found to be able to recognize states of protoplasts with an accuracy of 85 percent. This method is promising for determining life or death of protoplasts in cell fusion, instead of FDA.