Direct detection of Lyme disease by digital microscopy

Studies were performed to test the hypothesis that an early direct diagnostic test for Lyme disease can be developed. This test involves automatic microscopic scanning of a relatively large volume of body fluids for the sparsely occurring Lyme disease causing agent, the spirochete bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi. Preliminary results indicate that segmentation, measurement, and classification techniques can be used to differentiate spirochetes from other materials in microscope images of blood smears stained with a fluorescent dye.<>