Image panaroma with autofocusing on microscopic imaging

During microscopic analyses for recognition of bacteria, the prior process is to provide the optimum focusing. After the realization of focusing, due to small field o f v iew on the microscope microbiology laboratory technicians must scan without losing focusing by controlling with eye-hand to see all part of sample. This process takes a lot of time and increases making mistakes during laboratory analyses. In this study, minimizing these negative effects and obtaining more reliable results in the bacteria analysis process are proposed. Firstly passive focus methods based autofocusing on the Z axis of microscope was implemented. After that, automatic scanning begins by moving microscope platform with step motors on the X-Y axes. During scanning process, determining the focusing degradation images on the X-Y axes was achieved, high resolution (panoramic) image was obtained with panorama without losing focusing. Moreover, panorama was generated with and without losing focusing and it was shown that the image obtained without losing focusing had better quality and higher resolution. Proposed study was tested on image sequence with smear stained sputum for TB diagnosis