Outstanding
- Open Call for Research Projects in ICTS-Doñana!
- La Fundación Jaime González-Gordon ofrece cuatro becas para el desarrollo de Trabajos de Fin de Máster sobre Doñana
- Five contracts to carry out a doctoral thesis in the Doñana Biological Station - CSIC
- Actividades de la Estación Biológica de Doñana en la Noche Europea de los Investigadores
- ICTS-RBD prepares the 30th Migratory Passerine Bird Ringing Campaign in Doñana
News
MIZUTAMA: a quick, easy, and accurate method for counting erythrocytes
Hematological profiles are routinely used to assess the health status of animals. Several methods have been developed for blood-cell counting, but typically they are expensive and/or time-consuming. Here, a free image-processing software, Mizutama, developed for counting cells in photographs of blood smears is presented. Mizutama uses the thresholding method to transform original photographs into grayscale trinary images. Following a number of parameters, Mizutama searches in the image for cells of a given size, with a nucleus size relative to cytoplasm surface area. The software is not only easy, versatile, and intuitive to handle, but is also fast when counting cells in photographs. Moreover, it is highly accurate, failing to detect only c. 1.4% of avian red cells in ordinary microscopic photographs. The Mizutama application may greatly facilitate the counting of erythrocytes and other blood cells in physiological studies, saving time and money. informacion[at]ebd.csic.es: Ochoa et al (2019) MIZUTAMA: a quick, easy, and accurate method for counting erythrocytes. Physiol Biochem Zool DOI: 10.1086/702666
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/702666