Polarized Hyperspectral Microscopic Imaging for White Blood Cells on Wright-Stained Blood Smear Slides

Ximing Zhou; Hasan K Mubarak; Ling Ma; Doreen Palsgrove; Samuel Ortega; Gustavo Marrero Callicó; Edward A Medina; Bradley B Brimhall; Marisa Whitted; Baowei Fei

doi:10.1117/12.2655708

Polarized Hyperspectral Microscopic Imaging for White Blood Cells on Wright-Stained Blood Smear Slides

Proc SPIE Int Soc Opt Eng. 2023 Jan-Feb:12382:1238207. doi: 10.1117/12.2655708. Epub 2023 Mar 15.

Authors

Ximing Zhou^{1

2}, Hasan K Mubarak^{1

2}, Ling Ma^{1

2}, Doreen Palsgrove³, Samuel Ortega^{4

5}, Gustavo Marrero Callicó⁴, Edward A Medina⁶, Bradley B Brimhall⁶, Marisa Whitted⁵, Baowei Fei^{1

2

7}

Affiliations

¹ Center for Imaging and Surgical Innovation, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX.
² Department of Bioengineering, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX.
³ Department of Pathology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX.
⁴ Institute for Applied Microelectronics, University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, Spain.
⁵ Norwegian Institute of Food Fisheries and Aquaculture Research, Tromsø, Norway.
⁶ Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX.
⁷ University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Department of Radiology, Dallas, TX.

Abstract

White blood cells, also called leukocytes, are hematopoietic cells of the immune system that are involved in protecting the body against both infectious diseases and foreign materials. The abnormal development and uncontrolled proliferation of these cells can lead to devastating cancers. Their timely recognition in the peripheral blood is critical to diagnosis and treatment. In this study, we developed a microscopic imaging system for improving the visualization of white blood cells on Wright's stained blood smear slides, with two different setups: polarized light imaging and polarized hyperspectral imaging. Based on the polarized light imaging setup, we collected the RGB images of Stokes vector parameters (S0, S1, S2, and S3) of five types of white blood cells (neutrophil, eosinophil, basophil, lymphocyte, and monocyte), and calculated the Stokes vector derived parameters: the degree of polarization (DOP), the degree of linear polarization (DOLP), and the degree of circular polarization (DOCP)). We also calculated Stokes vector data based on the polarized hyperspectral imaging setup. The preliminary results demonstrate that Stokes vector derived parameters (DOP, DOLP, and DOCP) could improve the visualization of granules in granulocytes (neutrophils, eosinophils, and basophils). Furthermore, Stokes vector derived parameters (DOP, DOLP, and DOCP) could improve the visualization of surface structures (protein patterns) of lymphocytes enabling subclassification of lymphocyte subpopulations. Finally, S2, S3, and DOCP could enhance the morphologic visualization of monocyte nucleus. We also demonstrated that the polarized hyperspectral imaging setup could provide complementary spectral information to the spatial information on different Stokes vector parameters of white blood cells. This work demonstrates that polarized light imaging & polarized hyperspectral imaging has the potential to become a strong imaging tool in the diagnosis of disorders arising from white blood cells.

Keywords: Hyperspectral imaging; Polarized hyperspectral imaging; Polarized light imaging; Stokes vector; White blood cell.

Abstract

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