Hyperspectral analysis to assess gametocytogenesis stage progression in malaria-infected human erythrocytes (Conference Presentation)

In this paper, we report a systematic workflow of hyperspectral data processing algorithms to quantify changes in the absorption spectrum and cell morphology of single malaria-infected erythrocytes undergoing developmental stages. Our workflow enables the quantification of changes in host cell morphology and the relative contents of hemoglobin (Hb) and hemozoin (Hz), that are the key intracellular molecules in the malaria-infected host cell. The quantified results exhibit a trend that both the segmented areal fraction of intracellular Hz and the ellipticity of the host cell increase as gametocytogenesis progresses, suggesting these two metrics may serve as useful biomarkers to determine the stage of gametocytogenesis.