Automatic Detection of Trypanosomes on the Blood Stream

• Autor(a) principal: José Rui Neto Faria
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://repositorio-aberto.up.pt/handle/10216/85262
• topic: Engenharia electrotécnica, electrónica e informática; Electrical engineering, Electronic engineering, Information engineering

Nowadays there are many diseases spread worldwide considered dangerous.Two of them chagas disease and the sleeping sickness are potentially life-threatening illnesses caused by the protozoan parasites: Trypanosoma cruzi (T. cruzi) and Trypanosoma brucei (T. brucei) respectively.These diseases are mainly found in Latin America and Africa being transmitted to humans and animals by small insects like triatomine bugs and tsetse flies,either by bite or contact with their faeces.The chagas disease has 2 phases, the initial, acute phase lasts about 2 months after infection, in this phase a high number of parasites circulate in the blood stream, but in most cases the symptoms are absent or mild.In the second phase,chronic phase, the parasites are hidden mainly in the heart and digestive muscles, in later years the infection can lead to sudden death or heart failure caused by progressive destruction of the heart muscle and digestive system.The sleeping sickness also has 2 phases, the initial phase, last from some weeks to 1 or 2 years depending of the sub-specie of the T.brucei parasite, in this phase a high number of parasitescirculate in the blood stream, and some patients suffer from fever and aches.In the secondphase, the parasite reaches the nervous system causing mental deterioration and other neurologic problems leading to the death of the patient.The objective of this work is to create a mobile solution that can help detect both the diseases in the initial stages by detecting the trypanossomas parasites.With this application, the user takes a photo of a thin blood smear sample of a patient,using an adapter that attaches the mobile device to a microscope, which will be segmented inorder to separate the components of the blood from its background. After that segmentation, the application will try to confirm if the parasitessegmented are the correct ones, informing the user if the donor of the blood is infected. With this,it becomes possible to make the detection of the diseases in countries where the health services arepoorly developed and people do not have good access to it.