Image analysis of biological systems with microcomputers

A microcomputer based system was developed to acquire and analyse images of biological specimens for the purpose of identification, classification and quantification. The system uses a video camera to capture images of biological samples either directly or through a microscope. The signal from the camera is digitized by an imaging board for subsequent processing through a PC-XT. From the processed image, simple features such as the cell enclosed area and the cell optical density were extracted for the purpose of cell identification or quantification. Two examples: (a) the quantification of DNA in blood cells and (b) the identification of hybridoma cells are given to illustrate the use of the system. The method is versatile and can easily be modified to adapt to other biological applications.