Design of a process for image improvement in digital cytology: a preliminary application

The work is focused on digital cytology, in particular on the introduction of the e-slides in the e-laboratory of cytology. The study has faced the problem of image-improvement in digital cytology, starting from the settling up of a significant application of digital cytology through the WEB up to the research and application of a suitable software environment. Thirty-eight snapshots have been selected from six e-slides relevant to cervico-vaginal cytology positioned at a web server. The software Mathematica has been selected due to its own characteristics and has been successfully used in a proposed process of image improvement applied on the snapshots with particular attention to (a) the focus emulation; (b) the visibility enhancement and (c) the feature recognition. The proposed methodology has been successfully investigated. It could be useful in tele-consulting, e-learning, in cooperative diagnosis and in the applications of image quality improvements. Furthermore, the methodology could be also useful to initialize a container of medical image processing knowledge comprising experiences and viewpoints in digital cytology.