Microscopic image processing involves usage of digital image processing to acquire, analyze and process images from a microscope. Digital image processing uses spatial and frequency filtering techniques for processing digital images so as to improve their quality – which is now applicable in various fields like medical imaging, biological research and metallurgy. Acquisition of images is incorporated using a high resolution CCD camera attached to a microscope. Image processing allows large scale in-depth evaluation of images which are not visible to the naked eye; and used in the areas of cytology and histology. Microscopic imagery targets images captured at microscopic levels and helps to derive useful information from them. The cells behave in a unique manner at a micro level, and hence need to be processed to extract required information; which is the objective of this research. For chromosome analysis, a culture of rapidly dividing cells needs to be achieved using by drawing a blood sample and centrifuging it to separate out the white blood cells. These are further cultured in a medium which accelerates mitosis. Colchicine is added after 72 hours of incubation, so as to stop mitosis after metaphase is reached. A hypotonic solution is also added to enlarge the cells and separate out the chromatids. Finally, the cells are mounted on slides and are subjected to Giesma stains. It produces light and dark coloured bands on the chromosomes which help in uniquely identifying the individual pairs of chromosomes. They are then cut out from the photomicrograph and arranged in pairs. This process is called karyotyping. Chromosomes are supercoiled DNA associated with its chromatin. They consist of two sister chromatids conjoined at the centromere. It divides the chromosome into two short and two long, namely the p and q arms. A globalized notation has been adopted to distinguish the different banding patterns produced by Giemsa staining. There are 23 pairs of human chromosomes in a single cell. Each autosome is assigned a number, 1– 22 and the sex chromosomes are referred to as X and Y.
The arms are denoted with a p or q. Numbering begins at the centromere and moves out toward the telomere (end). Each region is further divided into light and dark bands which are also numbered from proximal to distal. Each band may be even further subdivided into sub-bands, which are denoted after a decimal point.
MOTIVATION
Efforts have been made in this area to address the limitations encountered by automatic karyotyping systems and also improve its efficiency. The objective of this work is to address the issues and propose solutions as compared to the previous works for similar kinds of problems. This is due to the motivation behind the work to make the proposed techniques innovative, simple and less computational.
Automatic Karyotyping 