Cell identification using image analysis: A literature survey

Recent advances in microcopy and improvements in image processing algorithms have allowed the development of computer-assisted analytical approaches in cell identification. Several applications could be mentioned in this field: cellular phenotype identification, disease detection and treatment, identifying virus entry in cells and virus classification; these applications could help to complement the opinion of medical experts. Although many surveys have been presented in medical image analysis, they focus mainly in tissues and organs and none of the surveys about image cells consider an analysis following the stages in the typical image processing: segmentation, feature extraction and classification. The goal of this study is to provide comprehensive and critical analyses about the trends in each stage of cell image processing. In this paper we present a literature survey about cell identification using different image processing techniques.