Diagnosis of Leukemia and its types Using Digital Image Processing Techniques

Leukemia or blood cancer is caused due to cancer of blood forming tissues by large number of abnormal increase in white blood cells in bone marrow. According to the predominant type of white blood cells, the course of disease is classified. The major classification of leukemia are acute and chronic leukemia. Acute leukemia gets worse very fast whereas chronic leukemia gets worse slowly. Leukemia can be subdivided based into type of blood cells affected. If cancerous transformation affects lymphocytes, it is lymphocytic/ lymphoid leukemia and if it produces red cells, platelets and other white blood cells, it is myeloid / myelocytic leukemia. Hence acute and chronic leukemia are subdivided as Acute Lymphoid Leukemia (ALL), Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML), Chronic Lymphoid Leukemia (CLL), Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML). The classification can be done by using a machine learning classifier called SVM (Support Vector Machine) classifier. This paper analysis the types of blood cancer by using the blood smear images of healthy and leukemic people with help of image processing techniques.