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Human parasitic worm detection using image

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Conference Paper December 2012

DOI: 10.1109/ISCAIE.2012.6482095

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 2012 International Symposium on Computer Applications and Industrial Electronics (ISCAIE 2012), December 3-4, 2012, Kota
Kinabalu Malaysia
Human Parasitic Worm Detection Using Image
Processing Technique
R. S. Hadi
Vision and Intelligent System Research Lab
Universiti Malaysia Pahang
Pekan, Pahang, Malaysia
zrftd_biomedical_engineers@yahoo.com
K.H. Ghazali
Vision and Intelligent System Research Lab
Universiti Malaysia Pahang
Pekan, Pahang, Malaysia
Kamarul@ump.edu.my
Abstract Intestinal parasites of protozoa and helminthes
may cause disease or even death to animals and humans. In
a current study of fecal sample examination to detect
parasites, a technologist examines images manually using a
lighted microscope. This method of examination is known
to be inefficient when it involves a large number of samples.
On top of that, it is very important to introduce a system
that is capable of assisting the technologist in the
examination of fecal samples. In this paper, an automatic
process is proposed to detect different types of parasites
from fecal samples using an image processing technique.
Image processing techniques have been introduced to
automatically screen the existence of parasites in human
fecal specimens. This process involves methods such as
noise reduction, contrast enhancement, segmentation, and
morphological analysis. At the classification stage, we
propose a simple classification method using logical
threshold, whereby the ranges of feature values have been
identified to classify the type of parasite. The proposed
system has been tested with 100 parasite images of each
class, which promotes accuracy.
Keywords Automatic parasitic detection; image
processing; MATLAB toolbox.
I. Introduction
Human intestinal parasite worms infecting air, food,
and water are the cause of major disease and health
issues. The most common symptoms of worm infestation
include diarrhea, stomach bloating, and digestive
disorders. Other symptoms include anemia, asthma,
constipation, fatigue, low immune system, nervousness,
skin rash. There are over 100 different types of parasitic
worms living inside human bodies. Parasites are
organisms that live on or in other organisms, obtaining
nutrients to live. This causes harm in the process. For
most parasites to survive, a host is required to complete
the life cycle. Parasites and worms can invade our bodies
978-1-4673-3033-6/10/$26.00 2012 IEEE
Ir. Z. Khalidin
Dean of Electrical Engineering Department
Universiti Malaysia Pahang
Pekan, Pahang, Malaysia
M. Zeehaida
Department of Medical Microbiology & Parasitology
School of Medical Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia
Kelantan, Malaysia
zeehaida@kck.usm.my
through food and water intake, and through transmitting
agents (like mosquitoes), sexual conduct, or through the
nose and skin. There are 3200 varieties of parasites in
two major groups; the protozoa and the helminthes. That
includes nematodes, trematodes, and cestodes. [1] In this
study, the different types of nematodes, common
roundworms (Ascaris lumbricoides), hookworms,
whipworms (Trichuris trichiura), pinworms, and
Strongyloides, stercoralis were studied. Roundworms
look similar to an earthworm and can produce 200,000
eggs daily. The parasitic disorders are recognized through
the identification of parasitic organisms in the blood,
urine, faces, and tissues by using the appropriate
recognition methods [2]. People with intestinal parasite
infections are usually under-nourished and weak. Human
intestinal parasites can be present in any disease, in any
person and at any age. This article analyzes the
microscopic images of two kinds of human parasitic
worms: Ascaris Lumbricoides ova (ALO) and Trichuris
trichiura ova (TTO). In order to diagnose parasites in the
human body, fecal examination is the most the common. .
If the organisms are present in the fecal specimen, they
examine the sizes, shape, and numbers to identify the
species of parasite, the degree of infection, and
appropriate therapeutic modalities. With the current
method of medical microscopic image processing,
doctors need to extract features manually through a
microscope, drawing conclusion according to the
parasitology atlas book. In this way, it requires a heavy
workload, and the diagnoses rely exclusively on the
experience of the doctors. Thus, it is difficult to maintain
enough people with expertise in diagnostic medical
parasitology. Furthermore, diagnostic medical
parasitologists are expected to maintain high standards of
proficiency in the identification of rare parasites. In
biomedical engineering, the study of how to implement
engineering with medical practice is rapidly growing
which is designed to help medical doctors diagnose their
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 2012 International Symposium on Computer Applications and Industrial Electronics (ISCAIE 2012), December 3-4, 2012, Kota
Kinabalu Malaysia
patients. Besides the advancement of medical electronics
equipment in the diagnosis of disease, there is still room
for improvement, especially when the diagnosis occurs in
volume or its being manually inspected by technologists.
The Goal of this paper is to present a viable method for
detecting human parasites using image processing which
evaluates five features in the body structure of the
parasite. This approach makes the detection highly
accurate and less time consuming. Detection is made in
two to four seconds per image, which is far lower than
compared to predictions done using the conventional
manual process.
II. Literature review
In previous studies, microscopic imaging analysis has
been used for recognition and detection of parasites [3].
The aim of the study is to classify several parasite types
occurring in human beings by using morphologic features
extracted in interactive image tools [4]. These
morphologic features were subsequently included in the
computation of classification indices. The parasite types
were then recognized by using the calculated indices [5].
Yang et al. (2001) has proposed an automated method
to detect common helminthes eggs in microscopic fecal
specimen images. For that purpose, the digital image
processing techniques and artificial neural network
(ANN) classifier are used. ANN classification was
performed by two sub classifiers. Most ANNs classify
given patterns according to their geometric clustering in
the pattern space [1]. An ANN identified the parasite
species based on their characteristics. In his study, four
features were selected based on three morphological
characteristics representing shape, shell smoothness, and
size.
Sengur and Turkoglu (2004) have proposed a method of
recognizing parasite eggs using pattern recognition
technique. In their study, the feature extraction
mechanism based on the invariant moments and artificial
neural network classifier was used; using that method, it
was reported that more than 90% true recognition rates
were obtained [6][7]. Finally, classification was carried
out: a specific pattern was assigned to a specific class
according to its characteristic features, selected for it
[8,9].
Esin Dogantekin (2008) proposed a robust technique
based on invariant moments adaptive network based
fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) for recognition of
human parasite eggs in microscopic images. The
technique presented in the study enabled classification of
sixteen different parasite eggs from their microscopic
images. This proposed recognition method included three
stages [10].
Derya Avci and Varol Asaf (2009) proposed an expert
diagnosis system for classifying human parasite eggs
based on multi-class SVM, which was based on invariant
moments and multi-class support vector machine
(MCSVM) for classification of human parasite eggs in
microscopic images. This method consists of pre-
processing stage, feature extraction stage, classification
197
stage, and testing stage. For this purpose, the proposed
approach was tested by using test data to detect sixteen
kinds of parasites. At the end of the test, 97.70% overall
success rates were obtained [11].
III. Methodology
Most researchers who have extensively studied parasite
classification extensively focused on classification
method to detect the type of parasite. Among the famous
classification tools are ANN, SVM, MCSVM and
ANFIS. Few of them are doing analysis at the features
selection or the image processing stage. In this research,
parasite images were collected as data from Hospital
Universiti Sains Malaysia (HUSM), Kelantan, Malaysia.
For both types of parasites, Ascaris Lumbricoides ova
(ALO) and Trichuris trichiura ova (TTO), 100 images
were collected. Some of them were not clear and were
rejected; the remaining images were used as a database to
system development. The second feature of this
methodology is image processing analysis, which
consists of pre-processing, image processing, feature
extraction, and classification. There are different methods
for the pre-processing stage, which have been tested to
get the best results. Fig. 1, Among those three methods,
only one method is the suitable, resulting in less error and
keeping the image data from being lost. Based on the
experiment, the result showed that pre-method III was the
best method.
Pre-method III removed the noise totally, since the
median filter was used twice. Contrast enhancement was
performed, so the brightest and the darkest pixel values
are estimated. Sharpness method was used to sharpen the
outlines of all objects. Then, by using edge detection to
clarify the edge of all objects inside the image, it goes to
the processing stage. The differences between the three
pre-processing methods are in the use of some processing
tools and sequences of those tools. For example, in pre-
method I, it used converter images from gray images to
binary images, based on threshold images. This was not
useful, since it helped to lose the main features of the
image, although this method is widely used in image
processing, which is why, (the pre-method I) wasnt
successful. It wasnt successful in this study because it
deals with parasite eggs and very small details, which
must be recognized in the detection stage. Additionally,
pre- method II ignored the convertor image to prevent the
loss of detail regarding input data, but it used edge
detection with canny filter. That is a way to detect the
edge of hard sharp objects. Since the two kinds of
parasite eggs in this study have very clear borders, using
edge detection with canny filter was one of the main
steps in the pre-processing stage. However, using pre-
method II was not a solution for all images that have been
tested because some eggs have hard background artifacts,
which means their borders wouldnt be very clear and
sharp. While in pre-method III, most problems in pre-
method I & II have been solved for better results by using
edge enhancement (sharpness) and edge detection (canny
 2012 International Symposium on Computer Applications and Industrial Electronics (ISCAIE 2012), December 3-4, 2012, Kota
Kinabalu Malaysia
filter). From the beginning, it twice used a median filter
to reduce artifacts and remove as much noise as it can.
Figure 1.Three different Pre-processing methods
One method that was used in this study and comes
recommended is shown in Fig. 2. The features have to
be extracted by using digital image processing techniques
for localizing and classifying the parasite eggs in a given
image. To develop a totally automated system and image
segmentation, the algorithm for feature extraction and
classification should all be automated. In addition,
dedicated hardware equipment is necessary to scan
complete images of each specimen under the microscope.
In this paper, an automated method to detect common
helminthes eggs in microscopic fecal specimen images
and to identify the correct species using digital image
processing technique is proposed. That proposed method
is Threshold with Logical Classification Method
(TLCM). That technique was used in Fig. 2.
Figure 2.The algorithm of the TLCM Method used in this studying
In the feature extraction stage, five features have been
selected based on three characteristics. Those
characteristics represent shape, shell smoothness, and
size (these parameters are section area, objects length,
objects width, length of boundary, and roundness).
These five features are obtained by image processing
tools on MATLAB environment. The five parameters are
the major features that are able to detect the parasite eggs
and each parameter have limited maximum and minimum
values, which are called range. These ranges are recorded
by experimenting and testing until the best results are
198
obtained. Table I shows feature values records of some
parasites (for ALO and TTO).
TABLE I
FEATURE VALUE FOR SOME ALO AND TTO
Briefly, the next diagram, in Fig.3, will clarify how
the classification stage works with TLCM classifier,
which is based on the values of features shown in Table I.
This information is for both parasites ALO and TTO
separately, as well as others when both of them are
studied in same time. After every single task of five
tasks, the program will recalculate N. N is the number of
objects that remain inside the image, so as to test if the
image captured objects, when there is one object or more
then the system will pass to the next task but if there is no
object remained means the image has no parasite detected
and the system will stop and request for the next image
and so on.
Figure 3.Classifier Tasks in Classification Stage
IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Based on the literature review, the most common
approach is to use pattern recognition at the classification
stage. However, in this study, a different method of
detection is proposed. Using that method, focus on the
image processing stage and characteristics get the best
results, so simple classification tools can be used to train
technicians to more accurately classify parasites. The
classification was based on the values which are recorded
as shown in Table I. The result comparison table shown
in Table II is between three different pre-methods; that
information summarizes the methodology for three sets
of results that clearly demonstrate that pre-method III is
the best method for the detection of helminthes eggs,
which a success rate of 93% for ALO with 7% error, and
 2012 International Symposium on Computer Applications and Industrial Electronics (ISCAIE 2012), December 3-4, 2012, Kota
Kinabalu Malaysia

94% for TTO with 6% error. Compared to pre-method I images as an input data which are going to be captured
& II, which are less successful in terms of results, Pre- from patients specimen in a microscope and each single
method III is the technique that reaches the best results in image is going to be analyzed separately. So if the system
detection of parasites. As shown in Table 4.1, pre-method finds one parasite (which its very seldom that can detect
I and II was 73% and 81% successful at ALO detection; one parasite only in one patients specimen) or finds 10s
and 75%, 84% of TTO successful detection. The main parasites then the system will decide that patient is
point of the comparison in Table II is to show that using infected with ALO or TTO or with both worms.
unsharp masking [12] and Canny edge detection [13]
together is more powerful to detect ALO and TTO types V. CONCLUSION
of parasitic worms. Notably, Table II doesnt show any
comparison with other studies in same field. The systematic diagnosis of two types of human
Table III clearly shows that 93% of successful detection parasitic worms, Ascaris Lumbricoides ova (ALO) and
is achieved for ALO and 94% of successful detecting was Trichuris trichiura ova (TTO) used image processing
reached for TTO. This result can be reliably reached technique with MATLAB toolbox. The algorithm
using the recommended methods in this study, which is presented in this paper is limited to the basic diagnosis of
ready to be used to detect ALO & TTO automatically. these kinds of parasitic worms. This technique is capable
of detecting the existence of ALO and TTO parasites
TABLE II within few seconds per image; thus, this method can
RESULTS COMPARISON
replace the conventional methods of detecting worms in
biomedical applications and this program can count the
Parasite Name Ascaris Trichuris
number of parasites which have been detected for each
lumbricoides ova trichiura ova
(ALO) (TTO) single patient. Further a user friendly environment is also
provided with simple GUI which helps to produce results
No. of Images 100 100 consuming lesser in man power and in time as well
No. of Images reached between 1-2 seconds per image as compare to
with successful 93 94
detect conventional methods.
No. of Images
with 7 6 (a)
unsuccessful
detect

% Ratio of Error 7% 6%
% Ratio of
Successful 93 % 94 %
detect for overall
images

TABLE III
RESULTS RECORDES (b)

Name of method ALO% ALO% TTO% TTO%

success error success error

Pre-Method I 73% 27% 75% 25%

Pre-Method II 81% 19% 84% 16%

Pre-Method III 93% 7% 94% 6% (c)

Based on the demonstrated results, errors exist at a rate

of 7% in ALO and 6% in TTO. However, these errors
may be overestimated or ignored when it gives the last
decision of each patient because based on medical report
which is saying whenever its been found one parasite or
10s of parasites in the specimen of patient, the result will
be same that means patient is infected with that kind of Figure 5.1: Morphological operation of parasite shape (Ascaris
disease whether ALO or TTO besides that in practice lumbricoides Ova (ALO)). (a) Original image, (b) Parasite detection
image, (c) Outlined the parasite body in original image.
every single patient will source the system with 50

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 2012 International Symposium on Computer Applications and Industrial Electronics (ISCAIE 2012), December 3-4, 2012, Kota
Kinabalu Malaysia

(a) [7] Avci & Akpolat, Speech recognition using a wavelet packet
adaptive network based fuzzy inference system. Expert Systems
with Applications, 2006, 31(3), 495503.; Avci, Turkoglu, &
Poyraz, (2005) Intelligent target recognition based on wavelet
adaptive network based fuzzy inference system. Lecture Notes in
Computer Science (Vol. 3522/2005). Springer-Verlag..

[8] J. A. Freeman & D. M. Skapura, Neural Networks: Algorithms,

Applications, and Programming Techniques. New York:
Addison-Wesley,1992.

[9] Bishop, C. M. Neural networks for pattern recognition. Oxford

(b) University, 1996.

[10] Esin Dogantekin. A robust technique based on invariant moments

ANFIS for recognition of human parasite eggs in microscopic
images, 2008.

[11] Derya Avci & Asaf Varol. An expert diagnosis system for
classification of human parasite eggs based on multi-class SVM,
2009.

[12] Chris Solomon School of Physical Sciences, University of Kent,

Canterbury, UK and Toby Breckon School of Engineering,
Craneld University, Bedfordshire, UK, F u n d a m e n t a l s o f
(c) D i g i t a l Image Processing A Practical Approach with
Examples in Matlab, 2011, chapter 4.6.2 page 126.

[13] Chris Solomon School of Physical Sciences, University of Kent,

Canterbury, UK and Toby Breckon School of Engineering,
Craneld University, Bedfordshire, UK,F u n d a m e n t a l s o f
D i g i t a l Image Processing A Practical Approach with
Examples in Matlab, 2011, chapter 10.8 page 171.

Figure 5.2: Morphological operation of parasite shape (Trichuris

trichiura Ova (TTO)). (a) Original image, (b) Parasite detection image,
(c) Outlined the parasite body in original image.

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Kinabalu Malaysia

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