Hybrid electrical/optical low-cost advanced image processing system for pathology diagnostic

Nowadays when the computation ability of the computers is rapidly increased, the existence of image processing system may be an essential tool for the pathology researcher who will benefit from the image processing facilities that such system may supply. This system may be implemented in areas as immunocytochemistry, DNA ploidy analysis, chromosomal analysis and three dimensional tissue reconstruction. The problem with similar systems existing nowadays in the market is their high price, inflexibility and low speed of operation. In this paper we suggest a very low cost processing system. The suggested system does not require most of the expensive elements (such as the microscope optics) used in the systems commonly sold in the market. In addition to the low cost, in this paper, many novel image processing algorithms, to be used for pathology image processing, are introduced. Some of these algorithms may be implemented using a low cost optical data processor which speeds the processing procedure to much higher rates and increases the flexibility of the system.