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Tuberculosis (TB) remains one of the leading causes of death in developing countries and its recent resurgences in both developed and developing countries warrants global attention. Globally, there were an estimated of 9.27 million incident cases of TB in 2007. This is an increase from 9.24 million cases in 2006, 8.3 million cases in 2000 and 6.6 million cases in 1990. Most of the estimated numbers of cases in 2007 were in Asia (55%) and Africa (31%), with small proportions of cases in the Eastern Mediterranean Region (6%), the European Region (5%) and the Region of the Americas (3%). The five countries that rank first to fifth in terms of total numbers of cases in 2007 are India (2.0 million), China (1.3 million), Indonesia (0.53 million), Nigeria (0.46 million) and South Africa (0.46 million). Of the 9.27 million incident TB cases in 2007, an estimated 1.37 million (15%) were HIV-positive; 79% of these HIV-positive cases were in the African Region and 11% were in the South-East Asia Region (WHO, 2009).

Ziehl-Neelsen stain method is one of the common techniques that are being used to diagnose the TB infection. Smear microscopy with Ziehl-Neelsen technique has been the main means of diagnosing TB patients in developing countries. This is because the method is simple, rapid, reproducible, low cost and effective in detecting infectious disease such as TB (Luna, 2004). TB diagnosis is usually being done manually by microbiologist through microscopic examination of sputum specimen of TB patients for pulmonary TB diseases. However, there are some problems that have been reported with manual screening process, such as time …