Red Blood Cell Counter

This repository contains the implementation of a red blood cell counting application

This project is part of the CSC209H1 F course at the University of Toronto, focusing on system-level programming. The assignment challenges students to implement a simple red blood cell counting application using basic image processing techniques on text-formatted image data.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Setup
• Usage
• Functionalities
  • Reading Image Data
  • Counting Cells
• Testing
• Submission
• License

Introduction

In this assignment, students will analyze blood smear images stored in a simplified black and white BMP format, where pixels are represented as 0 (black) or 255 (white). The goal is to develop a program that counts the number of red blood cells in such images, based on connectivity of white pixels.

Setup

1. Clone the repository and navigate to the project directory:

   git clone <repository-url>
   cd <project-directory>

2. Compile the program using GCC:

   gcc -Wall -g -std=gnu99 -o count_cells count_cells.c image.c

Usage

To run the program, use:

./count_cells <image-file.txt> [-p]

• <image-file.txt> is the path to the text file containing the image data.
• -p is an optional argument to print the pixel matrix before other program outputs.

Functionalities

Reading Image Data

The program reads image data from a text file specifying the dimensions and pixel values:

• read_image(int num_rows, int num_cols, int arr[num_rows][num_cols], FILE *fp) reads the image data into an array.
• print_image(int num_rows, int num_cols, int arr[num_rows][num_cols]) prints the pixel matrix.

Counting Cells

Using the flood fill algorithm, the program counts discrete groups of connected white pixels (cells):

• count_cells(...) counts the cells based on adjacency of white pixels.
• Outputs the count using the format "Number of Cells is %d\n".

Testing

You are encouraged to create small test image files to validate the functionality of the program and check edge cases. Example input format:

4 7
0 0 255 255 0 0 0
0 255 0 0 255 255 0
0 255 0 0 0 0 0 
255 255 0 0 0 0 0

This should help verify the accuracy of the cell counting algorithm.

Submission

Add, commit, and push your image.c and count_cells.c files to the a1 directory in your repository:

git add image.c count_cells.c
git commit -m "Add cell counting functionality"
git push

Please refer to the Syllabus for detailed submission guidelines.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.