JPS628748B2 - - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to an apparatus for classifying monocytes and lymphocytes in white blood cells.

There are several types of white blood cells: basophils, eosinophils, neutrophils, monocytes, and lymphocytes. Each of these is produced in different parts of the body and has different functions.
Therefore, the white blood cells in the blood are counted by type,
Alternatively, understanding changes in individual types of white blood cells can contribute to disease diagnosis.

The purpose of this invention is to classify monocytes and lymphocytes as part of the above-mentioned leukocyte test.

This invention classifies monocytes based on the fact that they have a larger nuclear area than lymphocytes, and that monocytes have a smaller nuclear optical density level than lymphocytes.

The present invention will be explained below based on one embodiment shown in FIGS. 1 to 6. In Fig. 1, numeral 1 is an optical block equipped with a microscope, a television camera, a step motor, etc., which adds a vertical synchronization signal and a horizontal synchronization signal to a video signal obtained by photographing a slide smeared with blood. A composite video signal a (see FIG. 3a) is output. This composite video signal a is sent to the video signal conversion circuit 8 and displayed on the screen of the monitor television 10. At this time, the step motor in the optical block is driven to move the slide along the x-axis while viewing the monitor TV 10.
By moving in the y-axis direction, white blood cells are displayed on the monitor television 10, for example, as shown in FIG. As mentioned above, in this invention, monocytes and lymphocytes are classified based on the difference in nuclear area size and the difference in the optical density of the nucleus between monocytes and lymphocytes. It is necessary to identify the nuclear part of white blood cells. Therefore, the synchronization signal separation circuit 12, the sawtooth wave generation circuit 14, and the wind pulse generation circuit 16
is used.

As shown in FIGS. 3b and 3c, the synchronization signal separation circuit 12 separates the vertical synchronization signal c from the composite video signal a.
and the horizontal synchronizing signal b.

The sawtooth wave generating circuit 14 generates a vertically synchronized sawtooth wave d and a horizontally synchronized sawtooth wave e as shown in FIG. 3d and e based on the vertical and horizontal synchronizing signals b and c.
Since the vertical synchronous sawtooth wave d is a ramp voltage that increases from the falling edge of each vertical synchronous signal to the rising edge of the next vertical synchronous signal, as is clear from Fig. 3d, the value of the vertical synchronous sawtooth wave d is represents the number of scanning line counting from the top that is currently being scanned.
Furthermore, as is clear from Fig. 3e, the horizontal synchronous sawtooth wave e is a ramp voltage that increases from the fall of each horizontal synchronous signal to the rise of the next horizontal synchronous signal, so the horizontal synchronous sawtooth wave e The value of e represents how far the scanning line is currently scanning from the left end (scanning start point).

The wind pulse generation circuit 16 includes a comparator 18,
20, 22, 24, NOR circuit 26, AND circuit 3
Consists of 0. The comparator 18 generates a pulse g as shown in FIG. 3g during the period when the vertically synchronized sawtooth wave d is less than the set voltage V ₁ . On the other hand, the comparator 20 is
During the period when the vertically synchronized sawtooth wave d is greater than the set voltage V ₂ , a pulse f is generated as shown in FIG. 3f.
The outputs of these comparators 18 and 20 are outputted by a NOR circuit 26.
Since _the NOR circuit 26 _is supplied to
Generates a pulse. As mentioned above, the vertical synchronous sawtooth wave d indicates which scanning line from the top is currently being scanned, so V ₁ is selected to be the voltage corresponding to the scanning line shown in FIG. 6, for example, and V ₂ is Similarly, if a voltage corresponding to scanning is selected, the NOR circuit 26 generates a pulse while the scanning lines ~ are scanning.

The comparator 22 has a horizontal synchronous sawtooth wave e set at a set voltage V ₃
During the larger period, a pulse i is generated as shown in FIG. 3i. The comparator 24 has a horizontal synchronous sawtooth wave e
During the period when V ₄ is smaller than the set voltage V 4 , a pulse h is generated as shown in FIG. 3h. As mentioned above, the horizontal synchronous sawtooth wave e indicates which position the scanning line is scanning from the left end, so if the outputs of the comparators 22 and 24 are input to the AND circuit, then
The AND output generates a pulse while each scan line scans from a position corresponding to V ₃ , e.g., shown in FIG. 6, to a position corresponding to V ₄ , e.g., shown in FIG. . Then, if this pulse, the output of the NOR circuit 26, and the AND circuit are inputted, the AND circuit will be
A pulse is generated each time a section of the scan line is scanned. This pulse is a wind pulse j
It is called. In the above explanation, two AND circuits are required, but in order to reduce the number of AND circuits to one, in this embodiment, the three-input AND circuit 28 includes the comparators 22 and 24.
and the output of the NOR circuit 26, the third
A wind pulse j is obtained as shown in Figure j.
Note that the set voltages V ₁ to _{V 4} are configured to be changed, and by changing these voltages V ₁ to V ₄ while looking at the screen of the monitor television 10, a scan is performed in which the uppermost edge of the nucleus is scanned. The lines and are scanning lines that scan the lowermost end of the nucleus, and the nuclear part of the white blood cell displayed on the monitor television 10 is specified by passing through the leftmost end of the nucleus and passing through the rightmost end of the nucleus.

A threshold circuit 30 generates a threshold pulse k as shown in FIG. 4b during a period when the composite video signal a is smaller than the comparison voltage _V5 . In the composite video signal a, as shown in FIG. 2, the video signal 3 obtained by the scanning line 2 has a high level, that is, the signal voltage decreases in the order of protoplasm 4, nucleus 5, and chromatin 6. In FIGS. 3a and 4a, the part indicated by the symbol A represents the protoplasm 4, and the part indicated by the symbol B represents the nucleus 5. Therefore, the comparison voltage _V5 of the threshold circuit 30 is determined as shown in FIG.
If a voltage representing the boundary between the nucleus and the protoplasm is selected as shown in FIG. 1, the threshold circuit 30 generates a threshold pulse k while detecting the nucleus.

Even though the nucleus has been identified by encircling it in Figures 6 to 6, the enclosed area includes a portion of the protoplasm. Therefore, when each window pulse j and each threshold pulse k are input to an AND circuit, this AND circuit generates a pulse every time the nucleus in the area surrounded by .about. is scanned. Therefore, by measuring the generation time of this pulse, the area of the nucleus can be obtained from the scanning speed of the scanning line. Therefore, in this embodiment, the wind pulse j and the threshold pulse k,
The clock pulse l from the clock pulse generation circuit 31 (see FIG. 4 d) is input to the AND circuit 32 to obtain an area pulse m as shown in FIG. to obtain a count proportional to the nuclear area of the leukocytes being analyzed.

36 is a nuclear level measuring circuit, which is a wind pulse j
For each occurrence of , that is, each time the region of the scanning line of . The voltage difference between the two is stored, and the maximum value of these is outputted as the nuclear level voltage of the nucleus surrounded by ~ in Fig. 6.

38 is a judgment circuit, which includes an arithmetic circuit 40 and a comparator 42.
It consists of. The arithmetic circuit 40 calculates the nuclear level voltage by
and the output of the counting circuit 34 is y, y-ax
(a is a predetermined coefficient value) is calculated. Comparator 4
2 compares this calculated value with the set value b and calculates y-
When axb, it is determined to be a monocyte, and when y-ax<b, it is determined to be a lymphocyte. This can be determined by drawing a graph of monocytes and lymphocytes with nuclear level voltage on the x-axis and nuclear area on the y-axis, as shown in Figure 5, and a straight line of y = ax + b. This is because monocytes are located above the straight line, and lymphocytes are located below the straight line.

44 is a display circuit, 46 is a printing circuit, and comparator 4
Based on the output of step 2, the analysis results are displayed and printed.

Further, the wind pulse j and the threshold pulse k are also supplied to a video signal conversion circuit, and this circuit converts the composite video signal a during the period in which both the wind pulse j and the threshold pulse k are generated into an off state. ,
That is, it is supplied to the monitor television 10 as a low level. Therefore, on the screen of the monitor television 10, it is possible to darken areas other than the image of the nucleus of the white blood cell currently being analyzed.

In this way, the white blood cell, monocyte, and lymphocyte identification device measures the nuclear area and nuclear level voltage to determine whether it is a lymphocyte or a monocyte, so it has extremely high accuracy. can be classified, and the configuration of the device can be simplified.

In the above embodiment, the window pulse generation circuit is configured with four comparators, a NOR circuit, and an AND circuit, but other configurations are also possible.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of one embodiment of the leukocyte monocyte and lymphocyte analyzer according to the present invention, and FIG.
The figure shows the relationship between white blood cells and their video signals, Figures 3 and 4 are timing charts of the signals of each part of the device in Figure 1, Figure 5 shows the analysis results, and Figure 6 shows the relationship between white blood cells and their video signals. 2 is a diagram showing an example of a display screen of the monitor television shown in FIG. 1. FIG. 1...Optical block, 14...Sawtooth wave generation circuit, 16
...Wind pulse generation circuit, 30... Threshold circuit, 31... Clock pulse generation circuit, 32... AND circuit, 34... Counting circuit, 36... Nuclear level measuring circuit, 38... Judgment circuit.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1 A circuit that generates a composite video signal by adding a vertical synchronization signal and a horizontal synchronization signal to a video signal obtained by imaging white blood cells in a sample; from the fall of the vertical synchronization signal to the rise of the next vertical synchronization signal; The value increases sequentially, and the value increases sequentially from the falling edge of the horizontal sync signal to the rising edge of the next horizontal sync signal. a circuit that generates a horizontal synchronous sawtooth wave whose value represents the position of the currently scanned scanning line; a first comparator that compares the vertically synchronized sawtooth wave with a first setting value predetermined to correspond to a scanning line to be scanned; a second comparator that compares the vertically synchronized sawtooth wave with a second set value predetermined so as to correspond to the position on the scanning line where the leftmost end of the nucleus of the imaged white blood cell is located; a third comparator that compares the horizontal synchronous sawtooth wave with a predetermined third setting value; A fourth comparator compares the set value of No. 4 with the horizontal synchronous sawtooth wave, and each output of the first to fourth comparators is inputted, and the scanning line corresponding to the first set value to the second setting is inputted. a logic circuit that generates a wind pulse every time a scanning line corresponding to the value is scanned from a position corresponding to a third set value to a position corresponding to a fourth set value; ;The fifth line represents the boundary between the video signal level of the protoplasm of the white blood cell and the video signal level of the nucleus, which is darker than this level.
a circuit that generates a threshold pulse for each period in which the synthesized video signal shows a value darker than the video level represented by the fifth setting value by comparing the set value of the synthesized video signal with the synthesized video signal; a circuit that generates a clock pulse; ; an AND circuit into which this clock pulse, the above-mentioned window pulse, and the above-mentioned threshold pulse are input; a circuit that counts the output of this AND circuit; a nuclear level measuring circuit that stores the difference between the nuclear level measuring circuit and the protoplasmic level value, and outputs the maximum value of each of these differences; and a value obtained by multiplying the output of this nuclear level measuring circuit by a coefficient, and A circuit for determining whether or not a difference between monocytes and lymphocytes is larger than a predetermined value.