Now, an APP to count your Red Blood Cells

Records, All, Science & Technology

4 students from PESCE, Mandya, develop an app to count RBC on mobile phones

Seen in the picture are (from left) K.N. Pooja, H.S. Shwetha, Harshita Sinha and R. Parag of the Department of Information Science and Engineering, PESCE, Mandya, at the National Conference on ‘Recent Innovations in Information, Communication Technology and Management (RIICTeM-2015)’ organised at Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) PG Centre and Regional Office, Kalaburagi, on May 21 and 22 where the team presented a paper on ‘A Smart Phone Based Solution for Extracting and Counting of Red Blood Cells in a Blood Smear Image’ under the guidance of S.M. Bramesh, Assistant Professor of Dept. of Information Science and Engineering, PESCE, Mandya
Seen in the picture are (from left) K.N. Pooja, H.S. Shwetha, Harshita Sinha and R. Parag of the Department of Information Science and Engineering, PESCE, Mandya, at the National Conference on ‘Recent Innovations in Information, Communication Technology and Management (RIICTeM-2015)’ organised at Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) PG Centre and Regional Office, Kalaburagi, on May 21 and 22 where the team presented a paper on ‘A Smart Phone Based Solution for Extracting and Counting of Red Blood Cells in a Blood Smear Image’ under the guidance of S.M. Bramesh, Assistant Professor of Dept. of Information Science and Engineering, PESCE, Mandya

by Kedar Koushik

Imagine a future where you neither have to visit a clinic nor have to depend on the laboratory specialist to count the Red Blood Cells (RBC). All you need is your Smart Phone and the app developed by the students of PES College of Engineering (PESCE), Mandya, to generate a RBC report, which means, you can detect leukemia, anaemia and other undetected heart and lung problems right at the comfort of your home.

At the recently concluded National Conference on ‘Recent Innovations in Information, Communication Technology and Management (RIICTeM-2015)’ organised at Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) PG Centre and Regional Office, Kalaburagi, R. Parag, Harshita Sinha, H.S. Shwetha and K.N. Pooja, all studying 8th semester at the Department of Information Science and Engineering, PESCE, Mandya, presented a paper on an app they have developed — RCB Counter, that could change the way RBC reports are generated.

Their paper titled ‘A Smart Phone Based Solution for Extracting and Counting of Red Blood Cells in a Blood Smear Image,’ presented under the guidance of S.M. Bramesh, Assistant Professor of Dept. of Information Science and Engineering, PESCE, Mandya, has been selected for the publication in International Journals.

Here is how the ‘RBC Counter’ app works. The microscopically magnified images of blood samples are captured by the smart phone and are enhanced using various techniques to get a sharper and detailed image. This pre-processed image undergoes Hough Transform — a digital image processing technique, which isolates the Red Blood Cells in the image. Later, the presence of RBC is counted and is further appropriated to a cubic millimetre of blood volume rendering the RBC count with an accuracy rate of 95.67 per cent.

Speaking to Star of Mysore, Parag, one among the four students who presented the paper, said, “This is perhaps the first time that one can count their RBC on their Smart Phone. We have had the same technology on the laptop, like MATLAB, but not on the Smart Phone.”

Parag said that the idea was provided by their mentor S.M. Bramesh and added, “Our main concern was with the poor and the people in rural areas. They cannot afford to spend a lot of money to come to urban areas for the tests, and even if they do, it’ll take an entire day to get their results. With our app — RCB Counter — they can make their own test and the results will be given instantly. There is also no need for secondary confirmation since the device is quite accurate.”

Parag also said that it took the team of four almost six months to complete the thesis and added, “When we presented the paper at the National Conference in front of the Vice-Chancellor of VTU, Prof. H. Maheshappa, told us that he would get us the patent rights after we are awarded the degree, so we are really looking forward to it.”

Parag said that another team in their college is working on counting WBC (White Blood Cells) on the smart phone, and that they are planning to combine both for a comprehensive app for smart phones.

source: http://www.starofmysore.com / Star of Mysore / Home> General News / Wednesday – June 02nd, 2015

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