06 November 2020
14:00 Master's Defense Fully distance
Theme
Automated and Quantitative Diagnosis of Schistosoma mansoni Eggs
Student
Carolina Frayne Cuba
Advisor / Teacher
Alexandre Xavier Falcao
Brief summary
Intestinal parasites have been responsible for several types of diseases in humans, causing serious organic damage and a high number of deaths. Infections caused by these parasitic agents are often related to the population's lack of hygiene and education, as well as to poor health and sanitation services, common in underdeveloped regions of the planet subject to tropical, subtropical and equatorial climates. Several interdisciplinary studies have been proposed to improve the maintenance and the quality of the diagnosis of intestinal parasites by means of optical microscopy image analysis techniques. However, there are few studies that analyze images obtained in an automated way and, therefore, subject to being out of focus. This master's thesis presents a methodology for the detection, identification, and counting of Schistosoma mansoni eggs in optical microscopy image, in which the parasites may be out of focus. The approach was developed to assist in the automated and quantitative diagnosis of this parasitic agent. Strategies based on the generation of bump maps and mathematical morphology are used to detect candidate objects in each image. The large amount of impurities and the relative similarity of eggs to them, combined with the need to quickly identify the largest possible number of parasites, represent important challenges in this project. After detecting candidate objects, a convolutional neural network is applied to identify Schistossoma mansoni eggs. Experiments with the VGG-16 and MobileNet networks have shown promising results. Of all 300 eggs counted in our test base, the proposed methodology using VGG-16 counted 270 eggs. With the use of MobileNet, 208 eggs were counted.
Examination Board
Headlines:
Alexandre Xavier Falcão IC / UNICAMP
Clarimar José Coelho PUC-Goiás
Sandra Eliza Fontes de Avila IC / UNICAMP
Substitutes:
Hélio Pedrini IC / UNICAMP
Letícia Rittner FEEC / UNICAMP