{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,16]],"date-time":"2026-05-16T04:47:01Z","timestamp":1778906821712,"version":"3.51.4"},"reference-count":26,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"6","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2020,6,13]],"date-time":"2020-06-13T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1592006400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Entropy"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Malaria is an endemic life-threating disease caused by the unicellular protozoan parasites of the genus Plasmodium. Confirming the presence of parasites early in all malaria cases ensures species-specific antimalarial treatment, reducing the mortality rate, and points to other illnesses in negative cases. However, the gold standard remains the light microscopy of May-Gr\u00fcnwald\u2013Giemsa (MGG)-stained thin and thick peripheral blood (PB) films. This is a time-consuming procedure, dependent on a pathologist\u2019s skills, meaning that healthcare providers may encounter difficulty in diagnosing malaria in places where it is not endemic. This work presents a novel three-stage pipeline to (1) segment erythrocytes, (2) crop and mask them, and (3) classify them into malaria infected or not. The first and third steps involved the design, training, validation and testing of a Segmentation Neural Network and a Convolutional Neural Network from scratch using a Graphic Processing Unit. Segmentation achieved a global accuracy of 93.72% over the test set and the specificity for malaria detection in red blood cells (RBCs) was 87.04%. This work shows the potential that deep learning has in the digital pathology field and opens the way for future improvements, as well as for broadening the use of the created networks.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/e22060657","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2020,6,15]],"date-time":"2020-06-15T03:17:32Z","timestamp":1592191052000},"page":"657","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":69,"title":["A Deep Learning Approach for Segmentation of Red Blood Cell Images and Malaria Detection"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"22","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-6511-6221","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Maria","family":"Delgado-Ortet","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Core Laboratory, Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, Biomedical Diagnostic Center, Hospital Cl\u00ednic of Barcelona, 08036 Barcelona, Spain"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9584-3646","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Angel","family":"Molina","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Core Laboratory, Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, Biomedical Diagnostic Center, Hospital Cl\u00ednic of Barcelona, 08036 Barcelona, Spain"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Santiago","family":"Alf\u00e9rez","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, School of Engineering, Science and Technology, Universidad del Rosario, Bogot\u00e1 111711, Colombia"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-1514-7713","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jos\u00e9","family":"Rodellar","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Mathematics, Technical University of Catalonia, 08019 Barcelona, Spain"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-1889-8889","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Anna","family":"Merino","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Core Laboratory, Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, Biomedical Diagnostic Center, Hospital Cl\u00ednic of Barcelona, 08036 Barcelona, Spain"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2020,6,13]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","unstructured":"World Health Organization (2019). 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