KR20190022028A - Apparatus for capturing images of blood cell - Google Patents

Abstract

The present invention relates to an imaging device for capturing an image of a blood cell, comprising: a camera part for capturing an image of a blood cell; a lens part including a plurality of objective lenses and tube lenses having different magnifications; a lens alignment part for aligning one of the objective lens and the tube lens; a lighting part irradiating light onto a slide on which a blood sample is coated, by illuminating the slide; and a control part for controlling driving of each device. Accordingly, an autofocusing speed of a low magnification lens is improved by performing laser-based autofocusing, an accuracy of the result of calculating an autofocusing height of a high magnification lens is increased and the quality of the image can be improved.

Description

[0001] APPARATUS FOR CAPTURING IMAGES OF BLOOD CELL [0002]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a hemocyte image capturing apparatus, and more particularly, to a hemocyte image capturing apparatus capable of improving a capturing operation speed of a blood cell image and improving image quality.

An image analyzer (IA: Image Analyzer) is an apparatus for imaging and analyzing blood cells contained in blood-smear blood samples. Particularly, the image analyzer can measure the blood cell image captured through WBC (White Blood Cell) analysis by five kinds, basophil, neutrophil, acidic white blood cell (Eosinophil), mononuclear leukocyte (Monocyte) Lymphocyte (Lymphocyte) is classified as a device to distinguish.

Actually, leukocytes may exist in various forms depending on the patient's condition, and the hematocrit counting the number of each type is very important for diagnosing the condition of the patient, diagnosis and tracking of the disease.

Therefore, various methods are being developed to improve the accuracy of the image analyzer's discrimination results.

The applicant of the present invention has filed a patent application for a hemocyte imaging apparatus, a hemocyte differentiation system, and a hemocyte image processing method disclosed in the following patent documents 1 to 3.

On the other hand, unlike a cell analyzer having a hemocyte analyzing performance limited to two to five types, recently, six types or more and up to 14 hemocytes are analyzed.

Korean Patent Registration No. 10-1741766 (issued on May 31, 2017) Korean Patent Registration No. 10-1741765 (issued on May 31, 2017) Korean Patent Registration No. 10-1741764 (issued on May 31, 2017)

However, in the blood-cell image capturing apparatus according to the related art, the imaging speed and the image quality are degraded in the process of capturing the blood cell image using the low-power objective lens and the high-power objective lens.

That is, the blood-cell image capturing apparatus according to the related art captures a blood cell image using a low magnification objective lens, calculates the position of a white blood cell on the basis of the captured image, adjusts the position (height) of the high- So that a blood cell image is captured at a high magnification.

As described above, when the position of the high magnification objective lens is set based on the image, the operation speed is low and the accuracy of the calculated position value is low, and the image quality is deteriorated.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION An object of the present invention is to provide a hemocyte image capturing device capable of improving blood cell image capturing speed and image quality.

Another object of the present invention is to provide a hemocyte image pickup device capable of shortening a processing time by autofocusing a hemocyte image picked up by a low magnification objective lens based on a laser and improving the accuracy of an image pickup position calculated for autofocusing of a high magnification objective lens .

In order to achieve the above object, a hemocyte image capturing apparatus according to the present invention comprises a camera section for capturing a blood cell image, a lens section including a plurality of objective lenses having different magnifications and a tube lens, A lens alignment unit for aligning one objective lens and a tube lens, an illuminating unit for illuminating and illuminating a slide on which the blood sample is smoothed, and a control unit for controlling driving of each of the plurality of objective lenses, Focus lens is autofocused to pick up a first area of blood smear on the slide, and one or more necessary areas for obtaining a high-resolution image of blood cells in the first area are selected, And the laser-based auto focusing value obtained by using the low magnification lens and the position information Based on the previous low-magnification laser-based auto-focusing value after switching to the high magnification lens, and controlling the Z-axis direction operation in a plurality of steps to acquire multiple images.

As described above, according to the hemocyte image pickup apparatus of the present invention, laser-based auto focusing is performed to improve the autofocusing operation speed of the low magnification lens, the accuracy of the result of calculating the auto focusing height of the high magnification lens, The effect of improving the quality can be obtained.

1 is a configuration diagram of a hemocyte differentiation system to which a hemocyte image capturing apparatus according to a preferred embodiment of the present invention is applied;
2 is a block diagram of a blood-cell image capturing apparatus according to a preferred embodiment of the present invention;
Fig. 3 is a perspective view of the blood-cell image capturing apparatus shown in Fig. 2,
4 and 5 are respectively a plan view and a front view of the camera unit, the lens unit and the lens alignment unit shown in Fig. 3,
6 is a diagram illustrating an image position according to a distance between an objective lens and an object,
7 is a view for explaining an auto focusing process,
8 is a view for explaining the operation of the trigger controller,
Fig. 9 is a flowchart for explaining the imaging method of the blood-cell image capturing apparatus according to the preferred embodiment of the present invention step by step,
FIG. 10 is a view showing a state in which a best-auto-focused image is selected from a plurality of captured images,
11 is a view for explaining a focusing height offset of the first lens and the second lens;

BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION Hereinafter, a blood cell image capturing apparatus according to a preferred embodiment of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.

1 is a configuration diagram of a blood cell differentiation system to which a blood cell image capturing apparatus according to a preferred embodiment of the present invention is applied.

Referring to FIG. 1, an image analyzer 10 and a manual review center (hereinafter, referred to as 'MRC'), which are applied to a hemocyte image capturing apparatus according to a preferred embodiment of the present invention, And a server 20. The image analyzer 10 includes a blood cell image capturing apparatus 30 (hereinafter, referred to as an "image capturing apparatus") for capturing a blood sample and capturing a blood cell image, An image processing unit 11 for processing a blood cell image, a blood cell image processing unit 12 for transmitting the processed blood cell image to the MRC server 20, storing the discrimination result received from the MRC server 20 in the database 12, And a control unit 13.

The image analyzer 10 transmits a blood cell image, a result of discrimination and patient information to the MRC server 11, and the MRC server 20 is connected to a plurality of terminals 12 ), And when the result of the discrimination by the discriminator is inputted, it is possible to transmit the inputted discrimination result to the image analyzer 10.

Next, the configuration of the blood-cell image capturing apparatus according to the preferred embodiment of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to Figs. 2 to 5. Fig.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a blood-cell image capturing apparatus according to a preferred embodiment of the present invention, and FIG. 3 is a perspective view of the blood-cell image capturing apparatus shown in FIG. 4 and 5 are a plan view and a front view of the camera unit, the lens unit, and the lens alignment unit shown in FIG. 3, respectively.

As shown in Figs. 2 and 3, the hemocyte image pickup device 30 according to the preferred embodiment of the present invention includes a camera section 40 for picking up a blood cell image, a plurality of objective lenses having different magnifications, A lens alignment unit 60 for aligning any one of the lenses with the tube lens, an illumination unit 70 for illuminating the slide 31 on which the blood sample is smoothed by irradiating light, And a control unit 80 for controlling the driving of each device.

The hemocyte image pickup device 30 is provided with a slide 31 for moving the slide 31 in the X, Y, and Z axial directions to slide and move the camera 31 in the aligned state and the relative position of the lens and the slide 31 (90). ≪ / RTI >

3, the camera unit 40, the lens unit 50, the lens alignment unit 60, and the control unit 80 are installed inside the housing 32, and the illumination unit 70 is installed below the housing 32. [ And a slide moving unit 90 may be provided.

The camera unit 40 may include a camera 41 for capturing a blood cell image.

In this embodiment, the camera 41 may be provided with a 3CCD having a resolution of about 2M class or a CCD having a resolution of about 9M class.

In particular, the higher the resolution of the camera, the wider the field of view (FOV), and the more blood cells can be detected.

Of course, the present invention is not limited thereto, and the number of cameras provided in the camera unit and the specifications of the camera can be variously changed.

The lens unit 50 includes a plurality of objective lenses, that is, first and second lenses 51 and 52 provided at the lower portion of the housing 32, and a plurality of tube lenses disposed between the objective lens and the camera, And may include a fourth lens 53,54.

In addition, the lens portion 50 may further include a beam splitter 55 installed between the aligned objective lens and the tube lens, and a mirror 56 installed between the aligned tube lens and the camera portion 40 .

That is, according to the present invention, one of a plurality of objective lenses and tube lenses having different magnifications can be selected and aligned, and the blood cell image can be transmitted to the camera unit through the aligned objective lens, the splitter, the tube lens, and the mirror.

Here, the first lens 51 is provided with a low magnification lens (for example, x5 to xlO) having a lower magnification than the second lens 52, and the second lens 52 is provided with a magnification lower than that of the first lens 51 (For example, x50 to x100) having a high magnification.

In this embodiment, the first lens 51 may be a low magnification lens of x10 and the second lens 52 may be a high magnification lens of x100.

The third lens 53 is provided with a lens having a magnification of x0.5, and the fourth lens 54 is provided with a lens having a magnification of x1.

Accordingly, the present invention can obtain a blood cell image at various magnifications such as x5, x10, x50, and x100 by selectively aligning the first through fourth lenses.

Of course, the present invention is not limited thereto, and the number of the objective lens and the tube lens and the magnification of each lens can be variously changed.

The lens arranging portion 60 is arranged to selectively arrange any one of the first and second lenses 51 and 52 and the third and fourth lenses 53 and 54 provided in the lens portion 50, And moves in the X-axis direction, that is, in the left-right direction along the arrowed direction, thereby functioning to autofocus the first and second lenses 51 and 52.

For this purpose, the lens alignment unit 60 moves the first and second lenses 51 and 52 in the left and right direction according to the control signal of the control unit 80 to selectively align one of the first and second lenses 51 and 52 A second alignment module 62 and a first lens 51 for selectively aligning one of the first alignment module 61, the third and fourth lenses 53 and 54 in the left and right directions to the set position, And an auto focusing module 63 for moving the second lens 52 in the Z-axis direction according to the installation height of the second lens 52 calculated using the image of the blood cell image taken by using the blood cell image.

The first alignment module 61 includes a first driving motor for generating a driving force to move the first mounting block provided with the first and second lenses 51 and 52 and a second driving motor for moving the first mounting block And the second alignment module 61 includes a second driving motor for generating a driving force to move the second mounting block provided with the third and fourth lenses 53 and 54, And a second stage for moving the first stage.

The auto focusing module 63 functions to drive the Z-axis driving unit 94 provided in the slide moving unit 90 to move the slide 31 up and down to focus.

Meanwhile, the auto focusing module 63 is provided with a displacement sensor for irradiating a laser beam to receive a signal reflected from the slide 31 to sense a displacement amount, and the controller 80 controls the auto focusing module 63 based on the detection signal of the displacement sensor The driving of the auto focusing module 63 can be controlled.

As described above, according to the present invention, when focusing is performed on the basis of the detection signal of the laser displacement detection sensor during the focusing operation of the low magnification lens, compared with the case of autofocusing based on the blood cell image conventionally captured using the low magnification lens, Can be dramatically improved.

Accordingly, the present invention improves the autofocus operation speed of the low magnification lens and shortens the time required for the image pickup operation.

The illumination unit 70 may include a light source for emitting light and a diffuser for diffusing the light emitted from the light source into a slide disposed on the light source.

Here, the light source may be an LED.

The control unit 80 autofocuses the first lens 51 as a low magnification lens to pick up a first area (e.g., the entire area) of the smeared blood on the slide 31, One or more necessary areas for obtaining a high-resolution image are selected, and the selected necessary area is autofocused to image the second lens 52, which is a high magnification lens.

The controller 80 includes a motion controller 81 for controlling the driving of the autofocusing module 63 of the lens aligning unit 60 and a controller 80 for controlling the driving of the illumination unit 70 and the camera unit 40 by generating a trigger signal A trigger controller 82 may be included.

For example, FIG. 6 is a view illustrating an image position according to a distance between an objective lens and an object, and FIG. 7 is a view for explaining an auto focusing process.

6, an image when an object is located at a position closer to the focal distance between the focal planes of the objective lens is formed on the left side of the image center line, and when the object is located farther than the focal length of the objective lens, And is formed on the right side of the center line.

Therefore, as shown in FIG. 7A, the motion controller 81 can ascend and descend along the Z-axis of the autofocusing at the position where the target image can be checked, find the point where the laser beams are gathered, have.

To this end, the motion controller 81 stores the laser-based auto focusing value and the position information acquired using the first lens 51, replaces it with the second lens 52, It is possible to acquire multiple images by controlling the operation in the Z-axis direction in a plurality of steps based on the focusing value.

Here, the motion controller 81 receives the amount of displacement sensed by the displacement sensor, and can perform close control at a predetermined period to maintain a predetermined range. For example, the period may be set to about 1000 Hz.

Therefore, the control unit 80 can select an image picked up by the best autofocusing among the acquired multiple images, and control the selected image to be transmitted to the MRC server 20. [

2 and 3, the slide moving unit 90 moves the clamp driving unit 91 and the clamp driving unit 91 for clamping the slide 31 in the X-axis, Y-axis, and Z-axis directions, respectively And may include an X-axis, Y-axis, and Z-axis driving units 92 to 94.

The Z-axis driving unit 94 moves the clamp driving unit 91 in the Z-axis direction under the control of the autofocusing module 63 so that the camera unit 40 can focus the position of the blood cells.

The slide moving unit 90 may be provided with an encoder 95 for sensing X and Y axis movement positions.

The encoder 95 senses the X-axis and Y-axis movement positions when driving the scanning stage for imaging the image while moving the second lens 52 along the necessary area, and outputs the A-phase and B-phase signals.

8 is a view for explaining the operation of the trigger controller.

8, the trigger controller 82 generates a trigger signal for each of the number of pulses programmed based on the A-phase and B-phase signals output from the encoder 95 and outputs the trigger signal to the illumination unit 70 and the camera unit 80, As shown in FIG.

For example, the trigger controller 82 can set the on-time of the illumination unit 70 to about 2 mu s.

Of course, the present invention is not limited thereto, and the on-time of the illumination unit 70 may be variously modified.

More specifically, the trigger controller 82 controls the trigger pitch to output an ON signal to start the camera unit 40 for the first time when the initial trigger trigger offset position is reached , And the driving of the camera unit 40 can be controlled so as to drive or stop the camera 41. [

The trigger controller 82 controls the driving of the illumination unit 70 so that the light source is turned on when the predetermined LED delay time elapses and the light source is turned off when the LED on time elapses .

Subsequently, the trigger controller 82 can repeatedly control the driving of the camera unit 40 and the illumination unit 70 based on the trigger pitch.

Next, referring to Fig. 9, an imaging method of a blood cell image capturing apparatus according to a preferred embodiment of the present invention will be described in detail.

Fig. 9 is a flowchart for explaining the imaging method of the hemocyte image capturing apparatus according to the preferred embodiment of the present invention step by step.

9, the controller 80 drives the first alignment module 61 to arrange the first lens 51, which is a low magnification lens, at the set position, and controls the third lens 53 and the second lens 53 according to the magnification to be implemented. The second alignment module 62 is driven so as to selectively place any one of the fourth lenses 54 to align the first lens 51 with the selected tube lens.

In step S12, the camera section 40 captures an image of a blood cell incident through the first lens 51, and the control section 80 retrieves a blood cell area in which the blood cell is located in the captured blood cell image. Therefore, the control unit 80 can control to scan only the blood cell region searched for during the blood cell image capturing operation using the second lens 52, and quickly capture the blood cell image.

In step S16, the motion controller 81 stores the laser-based auto focusing value and position information acquired in the hemocyte image capturing process using the first lens 51. [

In step S18, the control unit 80 controls the driving of the first alignment module 62 to move the second lens 52 to the set position, and aligns the second lens 52 with the selected tube lens.

In step S20, the motion controller 81 controls the driving of the autofocusing module 63 so that the Z-axis driving unit 94 is moved up and down along the Z-axis direction in a plurality of steps on the basis of the previous low- do.

At this time, the trigger controller 82 generates a trigger signal according to the output signal of the encoder 95 to control the illumination unit 70 and the camera unit 40 to be driven.

Accordingly, the illumination unit 70 and the camera unit 40 are repeatedly driven in accordance with the trigger signal to capture a blood cell image to acquire multiple images (S22).

Here, steps S18 to S22 have been sequentially described, but the steps may be performed simultaneously.

FIG. 10 is a view showing a state in which a best-auto-focused image is selected from a plurality of captured images.

In step S24, the controller 80 can select the best auto-focused image from multiple images, as shown in FIG.

For example, the control unit 80 can select the best auto-focused image from multiple images based on various criteria such as sharpness and image quality.

On the other hand, in order to prevent an error due to the imaging height deviation of the first and second lenses 51 and 52 in the process of imaging the blood cell image, the controller 80 may perform the correction operation.

For example, FIG. 11 is a view for explaining the focusing height offset of the first lens and the second lens.

That is, the control unit 80 can check the deviation of the focusing height of the first lens 51 and the second lens 52, and compare the offset value with the offset value shown in FIG.

As a result of the repetitive precision test, the difference in focusing height between the first lens 51 and the second lens 52 was found to be an average of 0.82 탆, a maximum of 1.47 탆, and an average of 0.97 탆 and a maximum of 1.56 탆, 30 mu m, and the error after correction was 0.75 mu m on average and 2.03 mu m maximum.

When the correction was made on the basis of the height difference of the first position by magnification, the height difference was 28 탆, the error average after correction was 2.03 탆, and the maximum was 3.76 탆.

According to the test result, when the error of the first position is large, the control unit 80 has a large influence on the entire data. Therefore, it is preferable to apply the average value at the time of the height correction.

In step S26, when the slide 31 is changed to image the next blood sample, the control unit 80 controls the steps S10 to S26 to be repeated.

Through the above process, the present invention can improve the autofocus operation speed of the low magnification lens, increase the accuracy of the result of calculating the auto focusing height of the high magnification lens, and improve the image quality.

Although the invention made by the present inventors has been described concretely with reference to the above embodiments, the present invention is not limited to the above embodiments, and it goes without saying that various changes can be made without departing from the gist of the present invention.

The present invention is applied to a blood cell image capturing device technology that improves the autofocusing operation speed of a low magnification lens, increases the accuracy of a result of calculating an auto focusing height of a high magnification lens, and improves image quality.

10: Image analyzer 11: Image processor
12: Database 13:
20: MRC server 21:
30: hemocyte image pickup device
31: slide 32: housing
40: camera section 50: lens section
51 to 54: First to fourth lenses
55: splitter 56: mirror
60: Lens alignment part 61, 62: First and second alignment module
63: auto focusing module 70: illuminating part
80: control unit 81: motion controller
82: Trigger controller 90: Slide moving part
91: Clamp driving part 92 to 94: X, Y, Z-axis driving part
95: Encoder

Claims (7)

A camera unit for capturing a blood cell image,
A lens unit including a plurality of objective lenses and tube lenses having different magnifications,
A lens alignment unit for aligning any one of the objective lens and the tube lens,
An illuminator for irradiating the slide with the blood sample irradiated with light and
And a control unit for controlling driving of each device,
Wherein the controller captures a first area of blood smear on the slide by autofocusing a low magnification lens among the plurality of objective lenses and selects one or more necessary areas for obtaining a high resolution image of blood cells in the first area The high-magnification lens is picked up by autofocusing,
Based auto focusing value and position information obtained by using the low magnification lens is stored, and after the high magnification lens is replaced, the Z axis direction operation is controlled in a plurality of stages based on the previous low-magnification laser-based auto focusing value And acquires multiple images of the blood vessel image. The method according to claim 1,
Further comprising a slide moving unit for moving the slide provided with the slide and moving the slide in the X, Y, and Z axial directions to adjust the relative position of the camera and the lens and the slide in the aligned state,
Wherein the controller controls the driving of the illumination unit and the camera unit in conjunction with a signal output from an encoder that senses the X-axis and Y-axis movement positions of the slide moving unit. 3. The method of claim 2,
The controller may include a motion controller for controlling driving of the auto focusing module provided in the lens aligning unit,
And a trigger controller for generating the trigger signal in conjunction with a signal output from the encoder based on the laser-based auto focusing value and the position information acquired using the low magnification lens to control driving of the illumination unit and the camera unit Wherein the hemocyte image capturing device comprises: The method of claim 3,
The lens alignment unit may include a first alignment module for moving the plurality of objective lenses in the X-axis direction to selectively align one of the plurality of objective lenses to a predetermined set position,
A second alignment module for moving the plurality of tube lenses in the X axis direction to selectively align one of the plurality of tube lenses to the set position,
And an autofocusing module for autofocusing the Z-axis driving unit provided in the slide moving unit according to an elevation height of the high magnification lens calculated using the image of the blood cell image taken using the low magnification lens in the Z-axis direction Wherein the hemocyte image capturing device comprises: 5. The method of claim 4,
Wherein the low magnification lens is provided with a displacement sensor for irradiating a laser beam to receive a signal reflected from the slide to sense a displacement amount,
Wherein the motion controller controls driving of the autofocusing module based on a detection signal of the displacement detection sensor,
Wherein the proximity control is performed at a predetermined cycle so that a displacement amount detected by the displacement detection sensor is maintained within a predetermined range. The method of claim 3,
Wherein the trigger controller outputs an ON signal to initially drive the camera unit when the trigger trigger offset position is reached and controls the driving of the camera unit by controlling the pitch of the trigger signal,
A light source is turned on when a predetermined delay time elapses, and the driving of the illumination unit is controlled so that the light source is turned off when a predetermined light source on time elapses,
Wherein the driving of the camera unit and the illumination unit is repeatedly controlled based on the pitch of the trigger signal. The method according to claim 1,
Wherein the control unit checks the deviation of the focusing height of the low magnification lens and the high magnification lens and compares the offset value with a predetermined offset value and applies the average value to correct the offset value.

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