Detection of Abnormal Findings in Human RBC in Diagnosing Sickle Cell Anaemia Using Image Processing

Red Blood Corpuscles are the major cellular component of human blood which are responsible for gaseous exchange between living cells and external environment. In normal physiological condition, an RBC is circular in front view and bi-concave in side view. In terms of size, it is 7.5 mu m in diameter and 2 mu m in thickness. This normal morphology of RBC undergoes specific changes as a consequence of different pathological abnormalities. One of such disease is 'Sickle Cell Anaemia' where the RBCs take crescentic 'sickle' like shape. Here in this paper, correct identification of aberration in normal parameters of RBCs in an anaemic blood sample has been presented using different image processing tools and techniques. Here some preprocessing is done using Weiner filter and Sobel Edge detection method is used to find the boundary of the corpuscles. Then using region properties, a metric is formulated to determine abnormal shape of the corpuscles to diagnose the disease. The purpose of this paper is to highlight this medico-technical aspect.