Detection of Malarial and Babesiosis Parasite in RBC using Combination of Annular Ring Ratio and Marker Controlled Watershed Segmentation

Malaria is a disease caused by a single celled protozoan parasite. It can be fatal if not treated at early stage. The main goal of this paper is to provide an efficient algorithm to detect the presence of malarial parasite even at early stages. This method makes use of a combination algorithm of Annular Ring Ratio (ARR) and marker controlled watershed algorithm to identify the Red Blood Cells (RBC) in the blood smear image. The platelets and artifacts are removed by using morphological operations before identifying the RBC. The presence of malarial parasite is detected by using thresholding based on colour as the Giemsa stained nucleus are always blue. Using the same method the presence of Babesiosis parasite in blood can also be identified.