Iranian Journal of Medical Physics

Iranian Journal of Medical Physics

A New Method for Sperm Detection in Human Semen: Combination of Hypothesis Testing and Local Mapping of Wavelet Sub-Bands

Document Type : Original Paper

Authors
Seyed Vahab Shojaedini 1
Ali Kermani 2
Vahid Reza Nafisi 1
1 Electrical Engineering Department, Iranian Research Organization for Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran
2 - Electrical Engineering Department, Iran University of Science and Technology
10.22038/ijmp.2013.474
Abstract
Introduction
Automated methods for sperm characterization in microscopic videos have some limitations such as: low contrast of the video frames and possibility of neighboring sperms to touch each other. In this paper a new method is introduced for detection of sperms in microscopic videos.
Materials and Methods
In this work, first microscopic videos are captured from specimens of human semen. Several frames of these videos are transformed to wavelet sub-bands and bit-related planes are constructed from wavelet sub-bands separately. Finally, the acquired bit planes are mapped by different local mapping functions and decision is made using continuity and discontinuity of the mapping results. Based on the above decision procedure, each region of the microscopic image is assigned to either a sperm or other parts of semen.
Results
Performance of the proposed method was evaluated by two sets of microscopic videos which have been captured from semen of some infertile men. The first sets belonged to semen specimens with low densities of sperms and the second set belonged to semen specimens with high densities of sperms.
Conclusion
The results of this study revealed that the proposed method in this work is more efficient in sperm detection and extraction compared with the current approaches in both scenarios. Furthermore, it is evident that for specimens with higher sperm densities the proposed method improved sperm detection also reduces false detection rate considerably.
Keywords
Detection
Hypothesis Testing
Mapping
Microscopic Video
Semen
Wavelet Sub-Bands
Subjects
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Iranian Journal of Medical Physics
Volume 9, Issue 4 - Serial Number 4
November and December 2012
Pages 283-292

  • Receive Date 29 July 2012
  • Revise Date 16 March 2013
  • Accept Date 25 December 2012