Automatic Spectral Unmixing of Leishmania Infection Macrophage Cell Cultures Image

Evaluation of parasite infection indexes on in vitro cell cultures is a practice commonly employed by biomedical researchers to address biological questions or to test the efficacy of novel anti-parasitic compounds. In the case of Leishmania infantum, infection indexes are usually determined either by visual inspection of cells directly under the microscope or by counting digital images using appropriate software. In either case assessment of infection indexes is time consuming, thus motivating the creation of automatic image analysis approaches.