Tissue Cross-Section and Pen Marking Segmentation in Whole Slide Images

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Lucassen, Ruben T., Blokx, Willeke A. M., Veta, Mitko
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Lucassen, Ruben T.
Blokx, Willeke A. M.
Veta, Mitko
author_facet Lucassen, Ruben T.
Blokx, Willeke A. M.
Veta, Mitko
contents Tissue segmentation is a routine preprocessing step to reduce the computational cost of whole slide image (WSI) analysis by excluding background regions. Traditional image processing techniques are commonly used for tissue segmentation, but often require manual adjustments to parameter values for atypical cases, fail to exclude all slide and scanning artifacts from the background, and are unable to segment adipose tissue. Pen marking artifacts in particular can be a potential source of bias for subsequent analyses if not removed. In addition, several applications require the separation of individual cross-sections, which can be challenging due to tissue fragmentation and adjacent positioning. To address these problems, we develop a convolutional neural network for tissue and pen marking segmentation using a dataset of 200 H&E stained WSIs. For separating tissue cross-sections, we propose a novel post-processing method based on clustering predicted centroid locations of the cross-sections in a 2D histogram. On an independent test set, the model achieved a mean Dice score of 0.981$\pm$0.033 for tissue segmentation and a mean Dice score of 0.912$\pm$0.090 for pen marking segmentation. The mean absolute difference between the number of annotated and separated cross-sections was 0.075$\pm$0.350. Our results demonstrate that the proposed model can accurately segment H&E stained tissue cross-sections and pen markings in WSIs while being robust to many common slide and scanning artifacts. The model with trained model parameters and post-processing method are made publicly available as a Python package called SlideSegmenter.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2401_13511
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Tissue Cross-Section and Pen Marking Segmentation in Whole Slide Images
Lucassen, Ruben T.
Blokx, Willeke A. M.
Veta, Mitko
Image and Video Processing
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
Tissue segmentation is a routine preprocessing step to reduce the computational cost of whole slide image (WSI) analysis by excluding background regions. Traditional image processing techniques are commonly used for tissue segmentation, but often require manual adjustments to parameter values for atypical cases, fail to exclude all slide and scanning artifacts from the background, and are unable to segment adipose tissue. Pen marking artifacts in particular can be a potential source of bias for subsequent analyses if not removed. In addition, several applications require the separation of individual cross-sections, which can be challenging due to tissue fragmentation and adjacent positioning. To address these problems, we develop a convolutional neural network for tissue and pen marking segmentation using a dataset of 200 H&E stained WSIs. For separating tissue cross-sections, we propose a novel post-processing method based on clustering predicted centroid locations of the cross-sections in a 2D histogram. On an independent test set, the model achieved a mean Dice score of 0.981$\pm$0.033 for tissue segmentation and a mean Dice score of 0.912$\pm$0.090 for pen marking segmentation. The mean absolute difference between the number of annotated and separated cross-sections was 0.075$\pm$0.350. Our results demonstrate that the proposed model can accurately segment H&E stained tissue cross-sections and pen markings in WSIs while being robust to many common slide and scanning artifacts. The model with trained model parameters and post-processing method are made publicly available as a Python package called SlideSegmenter.
title Tissue Cross-Section and Pen Marking Segmentation in Whole Slide Images
topic Image and Video Processing
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.13511