Automated Metaphase Chromosome Image Selection Techniques for Karyotyping: Current Status and Future Prospects

Abstract

Identification of good metaphase is a prerequisite and an essential step in human karyotyping used for analysis of genetic abnormalities in human beings. Most of the research work is focused on automation of karyotyping process but despite being crucial step very scant attention is given to metaphase selection. The conventional method still used by cytogeneticists is a manual visual search of good metaphase spread from microscopic slides. This system is highly dependent on individual observations and suffers from majority of drawbacks such as complexity, tediousness, subjective, time consuming and needs a trained expertise. Today, there is an increasing demand in automating the process of metaphase identification to speed up the Automated Karyotyping so as to provide speedy, consistent and accurate diagnostic results and by that effective treatment. This paper is the systematic literature review covering thorough analysis and comparison of various reported selection techniques. It also provides directional pointer to future prospects in the research on automated metaphase selection tools.