An algorithm to detect overlapping red blood cells for sickle cell disease diagnosis

Abstract In Africa, Uganda is among the countries with a high number of babies (20,000 babies) born with sickle cell, contributing between 6.8% of the children born with sickle cell every year worldwide and approximately 4.5% of the children born with hemoglobinopathies worldwide. It is estimated that by 2050, sickle cell cases will increase by 30% if no intervention is put in place. To facilitate early detection of sickle cell anaemia, medical experts employ machine learning algorithms to detect sickle cell abnormality. Previous research revealed that algorithms for recognizing shape of a sickle cell from blood smear by fractional dimension, cannot detect sickle cells if applied on blood samples containing overlapping red blood cells. In this research, the authors developed an algorithm to detect overlapping red blood cells for sickle cell disease diagnosis. The algorithm uses canny edge and double threshold machine learning techniques and takes overlapping red blood cells images as inputs to detect if these cells are sickle cell anaemic. These images have a scale magnification of (200×, 400×, 650×) pixel taken using a microscope. The algorithm was tested on a total of 1000 digital images and the overall accuracy, sensitivity and specificity were 98.18%, 98.29% and 97.98% respectively.