APPLICATION OF FORM FEATURES IN DIGITAL CELL ANALYSIS OF NON-HODGKINS-LYMPHOMAS

The form of a biological cell nucleus can be characterized by the well -known circularity factor, which is derived from the area of an object and its circumference. More sophisticated form features are introduce d, which are calculated from the curvature of an object (''bending ene rgy'') or from invariant moments. To investigate the sensitivity of th e various form features on controlled changes of form and the behaviou r under rotation and scaling, algebraic curves similar to the form of real nucleus profiles are generated. Analysis of the shape characteris tics of biological cells requires an extraction of the boundaries of t he nuclei. This was performed by an edge detection algorithm using eig ht gradient masks followed by a contour tracing procedure with feedbac k. The suitability of the introduced form features for classification of different nucleus profiles of non-Hodgkin's lymphomas (NHL) was tes ted using a Bayes classifier.