Inflammatory Cell Extraction and Nuclei Detection in Pap Smear Images

The automated diagnosis of cervical cancer in Pap smear images is a difficult though extremely important procedure. In order to obtain reliable diagnostic information, the nuclei and their characteristics must be correctly identified and evaluated. However, the presence of inflammatory and overlapping cells in these images complicates the detection process. In this work, a segmentation algorithm is developed to extract the inflammatory cells and enable accurate nuclei detection. The proposed algorithm is based on the combination of gray level thresholding and the definition of a distance rule, which entails in the identification of inflammatory cells. The results indicate that our method significantly simplifies the nuclei detection process, as it reduces the number of inflammatory cells that may interfere.