Sonification Strategies for Examination of Biological Cells

Abstract

Cervical cancer is one of the most preventable forms of the disease thanks to the fact that pre-cancerous changes can be detected in cervical cells. These cells are examined visually under microscopes, but the objective of this project was to ascertain whether their examination could be improved if the visual inspection were accompanied by an auditory representation. A number of different sound mappings were tested. This paper also traces the way the sound experiments evolved in parallel with the underlying research on cell image analysis. The main conclusion is that in this kind of application, the important parameters to sonify are the ‘badness’ of the cell and the reliability of that rating, and some likely sound mappings to convey this information have been identified.