Efficient Segmentation of Cell Nuclei in Histopathological Images

Author(s):Show less -

Linares, Oscar Cuadros ; Soriano-Vargas, Aurea Aurea ; Faical, Bruno S. ; Hamann, Bernd ; Fabro, Alexandre T. ; Traina, Agma J. M. ; DeHerrera, AGS ; Gonzalez, AR ; Santosh, KC ; Temesgen, Z ; Kane, B ; Soda, P

• Document type: Journal article
• Source: 2020 IEEE 33RD INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON COMPUTER-BASED MEDICAL SYSTEMS(CBMS 2020); v. N/A, p. 6-pg., 2020-01-01.

Abstract

Computer-aided cell nuclei segmentation in histology images is essential for image analysis. There is a demand for methods that accurately detect cell nuclei in large images. We introduce the FECS method for automatic cell nuclei segmentation in Hematoxylin and Eosin (H&E) stained histology images. Our method accurately segments cell nuclei, even in large images, efficiently. We use bimodal-like histograms to perform image binarization via the fast Otsu algorithm. We introduce a superpixel based filter for cell nuclei boundary detection. A Gaussian blur filter allows us to identify cell nuclei centers, which are understood as local minima in the individual cell nuclei regions. We have evaluated our method for two publicly available datasets. Out tests have produced average Jaccard index values of 0.963 and 0.914, respectively, supporting a high degree of segmentation accuracy. We have compared our method against a state-of-theart method; our method produced better results for both datasets. The average processing time of FECS was approximately just one second for images of 1k x 1k pixel resolution and about three minutes for larger images of 15k x 15k pixel resolution. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 16/17078-0 - Mining, indexing and visualizing Big Data in clinical decision support systems (MIVisBD)
• Grantee: Agma Juci Machado Traina
• Support Opportunities: Research Projects - Thematic Grants
• FAPESP's process: 18/06228-7 - Detection of patterns and anomalies in medical data using Mathematical Modeling
• Grantee: Bruno Squizato Faiçal
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• FAPESP's process: 18/06074-0 - Recuperação de Imagens por Conteúdo Utilizando Atenção Visual Seletiva
• Grantee: Oscar Alonso Cuadros Linares
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• FAPESP's process: 20/07200-9 - Analyzing complex data from COVID-19 to support decision making and prognosis
• Grantee: Agma Juci Machado Traina
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants