Red Blood Cells Segmentation: A Fully Convolutional Network Approach

Red blood cell segmentation in microscopic images is the first step for various clinical studies carried out on blood samples such as cell counting, cell shape identification, etc. Conventional methods while often showing a high accuracy are heavily depending on the acquisition modality. Deep learning approaches have shown to be more robust regarding such modalities and still showing a comparable accuracy. In this paper, we first investigate necessary steps to apply a specific type of deep learning methods, namely fully convolutional networks, to red blood cell segmentation. Based on data given and constraints imposed by our partners mainly regarding a high throughput of their data we then describe an exemplary application. First results show, that even with a focus on high performance a good accuracy above 90% can be reached.