In the summer of 2007, I participated in an REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. I developed a project that had previously been proposed by a graduate student at that institution but never attempted, using image processing methods to evaluate the probability that a photomicrography image contained cancerous cells. I spent ten weeks on the project, eventually producing a prototype in Matlab capable of identifying cell nuclei and thus predicting the presence of cancer cells in prostate photomicography even when faced with varied cell and image size, image contrast, image coloration, and other variables.
