Efficacy of low cost Liquid Based Cytology for cerivcal smears in automated segmentation of cells and nuclei

This paper is aimed at the development of a cost effective monolayered LBC slide preparation technique for automated nuclear and cellular features segmentation using image processing techniques. The sensitivity of Liquid Based Cytology (LBC) in monolayer preparation is reported to be better than Conventional Pap Smears (CPS) in automated image analysis. In our study a low-cost monolayer preparation by LBC for cervical smear has been developed. The digital images of new LBC method and CPS were processed to segment out primary target features like cervical cells and their nuclei. The target feature segmentation was successfully done and the used nuclear segmentation method was applied for the first time for these images. The sensitivity of the present LBC technique was superior to CPS as the algorithms developed for the segmentation and analysis of nucleus run better on the newly developed monolayer images.