International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887) Volume 50 – No.1, July 2012 18 An Accurate and Cost Effective Approach to Blood Cell Count Sanaullah Khan Department of Electrical Engineering, Comsats Institute of Information Technology Wah Campus, WahCantt. Pakistan. Aamir Khan Department of Electrical Engineering, Comsats Institute of Information Technology Wah Campus, WahCantt. Pakistan. Faisal Saleh Khattak, Arslan Naseem Department of Electrical Engineering, Comsats Institute of Information Technology Wah Campus, WahCantt. Pakistan. ABSTRACT Medical imaging brings up the methods and technique which enable us to take and analyse images of different disease and human body parts for diagnosing purposes. The old conventional methods used in hospital laboratories to detect and diagnose the problem were very slow and they had greater chances of error in it but medical imaging through different image processing techniques opened new, fast and cost- effective ways to detect and recognize different diseases and make it easy to examine and diagnose the actual problem. Now a day's researchers are working on different computer vision applications for health industry. Such as segmentation of kidney from ultrasound images, Cancer Detection Using Pattern Recognition Technique, segmentation of brain images, etc. Fast and cost-effective blood cell counting has major importance in the medical world. The old conventional methods of blood cell counting under the microscope render unreliable and unacceptable results and put an unendurable amount of strain on the Clinical laboratory technicians. Even so there are latest hardware solutions such as the Heska'sHema'true hematology analyzer, but they are widely unavailable and very expensive machines and so the under developed countries like Pakistan are not resourceful to provide such an expensive solution of blood cell counting in every hospital laboratory in the country. As a solution regarding this problem, this research based paper proposed a fast and cost effective software-based alternative method to count accurate blood cells. 1. INTRODUCTION Here in this research based project we proposed a software base solution related health industry which will assist the medical laboratory technician (MLT) to detect and find a blood cell count and produce an accurate cell count report. This would be very helpful to a physician in identifying the cause of his patient’s diseases. To count the blood cells in a clinical laboratory different two methods and techniques are used. One is the old conventional method of cell counting under the microscope and the other is to produce cell counting report by latest but very expensive haematology analyzer. But both these methods haveits own different drawbacks and limitations. 1.1 Limitations withExisting Methods The main problem with the method of counting manually under the microscope is accuracy, this method needs a real experienced laboratory technician who is trained enough to produce an accurate cell counting report, and even if the laboratory technician if well trained and experienced still we one cant neglect the chance of error in the report due to error caused by apparatus, personal errors, statistical errors etc. While on the other hand latest haematology analyzer somehow error free and fast but it is widely unavailable and very expensive machine and the countries like Pakistan are resource less to provide it in every hospital laboratory in country. So as a result of the problem this research based project proposed a new method of cell counting which is easy to use, don't need fully experienced men to handle, much more accurate then the manually counting method and is very economical way of cell counting for the countries like Pakistan. 1.2 Importance of the Project The Dengue and malaria fever is very common now days in south Asia and specially in Pakistan. In Pakistan the dengue virus infected over 30,000 peoples (only in Punjab) in summer 2011. Blood related viruses are very common in south Asia the most highlighted among them are Dengue and malaria, dengue fever is also known as break bone fever, when a dengue virus infected mosquito bites a human the virus along the mosquito saliva enter the skin of the person. This deadly virus then enters into the white blood cell of the patient and infected the cells, it damages the cell and its functionality and spread in the whole. Initially this virus can be detected in the laboratory by investigating low white blood cell count, which then leads to very low platelets (PLT) count ratio [1], and so blood test was the most common test to be diagnosed in the clinical laboratories 2. LITERATE REVIEW An analysis of blood was exercised from far back to ancient times. All three blood cell types performs its own role in healthy men's life and so count of different cell type of blood can identify different diseases that's the reason that complete blood cell count is the most common test carried out in all clinical laboratories. Different techniques were practiced since the discovery of blood cells in 1658. Before going into details of modern blood cell counting methods we should know the history of cell counting and the developments in the technology of cell counting which was finally implemented to quantification of the ingredients of blood 2.1 Hematology In hematology we deal with the essentials of blood and the tissues for the forming blood.[2] Hematology is used to identify and examine the cure for anemia, leukemia's and hemophilia (a kind of blood disease). Hematological tests are performed to check the results of certain treatments e.g. cancer chemotherapy and also to get outcome about the patients overall health.