Modified global and modified linear contrast stretching algorithms: new colour contrast enhancement techniques for microscopic analysis of malaria slide images

Malaria is one of the serious global health problem, causing widespread sufferings and deaths in various parts of the world. With the large number of cases diagnosed over the year, early detection and accurate diagnosis which facilitates prompt treatment is an essential requirement to control malaria. For centuries now, manual microscopic examination of blood slide remains the gold standard for malaria diagnosis. However, low contrast of the malaria and variable smears quality are some factors that may influence the accuracy of interpretation by microbiologists. In order to reduce this problem, this paper aims to investigate the performance of the proposed contrast enhancement techniques namely, modified global and modified linear contrast stretching as well as the conventional global and linear contrast stretching that have been applied on malaria images of P. vivax species. The results show that the proposed modified global and modified linear contrast stretching techniques have successfully increased the contrast of the parasites and the infected red blood cells compared to the conventional global and linear contrast stretching. Hence, the resultant images would become useful to microbiologists for identification of various stages and species of malaria.