Survey of Leukemia Cancer Cell Detection Using Image Processing

Abstract

Cancer is the development of abnormal cells that divide at an abnormal pace, uncontrollably. Cancerous cells have the ability to destroy other normal tissues and can spread throughout the body. Cancer cells can develop in various parts of the body. The paper focuses on leukemia which is a type of blood cancer. Blood cancer usually start in the bone marrow where the blood is produced in the body. The types of blood cancer are: Leukemia, Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, Hodgkin lymphoma, and Multiple myeloma. Leukemia is a type of blood cancer that originates in the bone marrow. Leukemia is seen when the body produces an abnormal amount of white blood cells that hinder the bone marrow from creating red blood cells and platelets. Several detection methods to identify the cancerous cells have been proposed. Identification of the cancer cells through cell image processing is very complex. The use of computer aided image processing allows the images to be viewed in 2D and 3D making it easier to identify the cancerous cells. The cells have to undergo segmentation and classification in order to identify the cancerous tumours. Several papers propose segmentation methods, classification methods and some propose both. The purpose of this survey is to review various papers that use either conventional methods or machine learning methods to detect the cells as cancerous and non-cancerous.