Image processing of particle detection for asbestos qualitative analysis support method -particle counting by using color variance of background

In this paper, we propose the technique classifying background area automatically by calculating the color variance in the RGB space of the picture. By this technique, the background classification robust to change of the background brightness and the background color was enabled. Moreover, we show the effectiveness of this technique by performing particle detection and verifying the result of counting. We aim at development of the particle detector which performs particle counting automatically about the ldquodispersion staining methodrdquo which is one of the processes of asbestos analysis. We used the pictures taken by phase contrast microscopy used for a ldquodispersion staining methodrdquo.