[Determination of fractal dimension using digital nuclear image of lymphocyte]

Microscopic morphological findings in smeared and stained blood cells are difficult to be characterized quantitatively. However, a recent progress in digital image processing has been enabled to express some of these findings quantitatively. In this report, we propose the usefulness to determine "box" fractal dimension of nuclear image of lymphocyte. Fractal dimension was determined in digital 256-grayscale images of normal, atypical and leukemic lymphocytes by a box-counting method after extracting a nuclear image out of a cellular image, binalyzing and thinning it. The results suggest that fractal dimensions of nuclear images are mainly correlated with changes in chromatin appearance. Fractal dimension could be a useful quantitative parameter for cytological differentiation between normal and atypical lymphocytes.