LeukocyteMask: An automated localization and segmentation method for leukocyte in blood smear images using deep neural networks

• Published in: Journal of biophotonics Vol. 12; no. 7; pp. e201800488 - n/a
• Main Authors: Fan, Haoyi, Zhang, Fengbin, Xi, Liang, Li, Zuoyong, Liu, Guanghai, Xu, Yong
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Weinheim WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA 01.07.2019; Wiley Subscription Services, Inc
• Subjects: Acquired immune deficiency syndrome; AIDS; Artificial neural networks; bright field microscope; Cell morphology; cell segmentation; Cell size; Cytology; deep neural networks; Digital imaging; Erythrocytes; Hepatitis; Image acquisition; Image analysis; Image processing; Image segmentation; Impurities; Information processing; Leukemia; Leukocytes; Localization; Morphology; Neural networks; Smear; white blood cells; bright field microscope; cell segmentation; white blood cells; deep neural networks
• ISSN: 1864-063X; 1864-0648; 1864-0648
• DOI: 10.1002/jbio.201800488

Digital pathology and microscope image analysis is widely used in comprehensive studies of cell morphology. Identification and analysis of leukocytes in blood smear images, acquired from bright field microscope, are vital for diagnosing many diseases such as hepatitis, leukaemia and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). The major challenge for robust and accurate identification and segmentation of leukocyte in blood smear images lays in the large variations of cell appearance such as size, colour and shape of cells, the adhesion between leukocytes (white blood cells, WBCs) and erythrocytes (red blood cells, RBCs), and the emergence of substantial dyeing impurities in blood smear images. In this paper, an end‐to‐end leukocyte localization and segmentation method is proposed, named LeukocyteMask, in which pixel‐level prior information is utilized for supervisor training of a deep convolutional neural network, which is then employed to locate the region of interests (ROI) of leukocyte, and finally segmentation mask of leukocyte is obtained based on the extracted ROI by forward propagation of the network. Experimental results validate the effectiveness of the propose method and both the quantitative and qualitative comparisons with existing methods indicate that LeukocyteMask achieves a state‐of‐the‐art performance for the segmentation of leukocyte in terms of robustness and accuracy . In this paper, an end‐to‐end leukocyte localization and segmentation method is proposed, named LeukocyteMask, in which pixel‐level prior information is utilized for supervisor training of a deep convolutional neural network, which is then employed to locate the region of interests (ROI) of leukocyte, and finally segmentation mask of leukocyte is obtained based on the extracted ROI by forward propagation of the network.