Tomography System to Acquire 3D Images of Cells in Laminar Flow: Software Architecture

In the framework of the project FIRB 2001 the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) has supported the research project RBAUOIZMZ5 aimed to produce a tomography system able to acquire 3D images of cells in laminar flow. The innovative aspects of the new image flow cytometer (IFC) designed and prototyped under this project regard to both the hardware and the software architecture. In particular, it is able to automatically identify micronuclei on the acquired images of flowing lymphocytes. Therefore, the new IFC overcomes the characteristics of the conventional ones. The paper focuses on the software innovations regarding to (i) the digital signal processing procedure, (ii) the optimized methodology for classifying the different cell types, (iii) the programmable gain of each input channel, and (iv) the image preprocessing to detect the micronucleus in the acquired image of the human lymphocytes. In order to highlight the improved performance of the IFC software architecture, results of preliminary experimental tests are shown