Image fusion for autofocusing in fluorescence microscopy for tuberculosis screening

Automatic microscopy for screening of sputum smears for tuberculosis would reduce the reliance on technicians in heavily burdened laboratories in poorly-resourced countries. Autofocusing is a key component of automated microscopy. We investigate the use of wavelet-based image fusion for automatic focusing of sputum smear slides as a component of automated fluorescence microscopy to identify Mycobacterium tuberculosis. We use manual focusing as ground truth for assessing the performance of the algorithm. Image fusion produces images with a degree of focus comparable to that of a human operator.

[1]  N. Otsu.  A threshold selection method from gray level histograms , 1979 .

[2]  A G Valdecasas,et al.  On the extended depth of focus algorithms for bright field microscopy. , 2001, Micron.

[3]  Tania S. Douglas,et al.  Classification of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Images of ZN-Stained Sputum Smears , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine.

[4]  Michael Unser,et al.  Complex wavelets for extended depth‐of‐field: A new method for the fusion of multichannel microscopy images , 2004, Microscopy research and technique.

[5]  Lily R. Liang,et al.  Image Fusion with Spatial Frequency , 2002, CAINE.

[6]  Noel T Goldsmith.  DEEP FOCUS; A DIGITAL IMAGE PROCESSING TECHNIQUE TO PRODUCE IMPROVED FOCAL DEPTH IN LIGHT MICROSCOPY , 2011 .

[7]  T S Douglas,et al.  Automated focusing in bright‐field microscopy for tuberculosis detection , 2010, Journal of microscopy.

[8]  D. Vollath.  The influence of the scene parameters and of noise on the behaviour of automatic focusing algorithms , 1988 .

[9]  Daniel P. Huttenlocher,et al.  Comparing Images Using the Hausdorff Distance , 1993, IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell..

[10]  C. Ortiz de Solórzano,et al.  Evaluation of autofocus functions in molecular cytogenetic analysis , 1997, Journal of microscopy.

[11]  Emil Wolf,et al.  Principles of Optics: Contents , 1999 .

[12]  Volker Hilsenstein.  Robust Autofocusing for Automated Microscopy Imaging of Fluorescently Labelled Bacteria , 2005, Digital Image Computing: Techniques and Applications (DICTA'05).

[13]  M. Perkins,et al.  Fluorescence versus conventional sputum smear microscopy for tuberculosis: a systematic review. , 2006, The Lancet. Infectious diseases.