Colour contrast enhancement based on bright and dark stretching for Plasmodium Falciparum in malaria slide image

Abstract

Malaria is a widely prevalent disease effecting millions of people in various parts of the world. Malaria is caused by four species of Plasmodium which infect both humans and animals; Plasmodium Malariae, Plasmodium Vivax, Plasmodium Falciparum and Plasmodium Ovale. Plasmodium Falciparum produces the most several symptoms and responsible for most malaria deaths. So far, manual detection under the microscope is one of the methods being used. However, there are noises which cause blur and unwanted effect on blood malaria images. Thus image pre processing such as image enhancement techniques are needed to improve the image. This paper proposed the used of contrast enhancement technique based on bright and dark stretching algorithm for colour image. The results show that the dark contrast stretching is a better technique to improve the image quality.