Multi-resolution cell orientation congruence descriptors for epithelium segmentation in endometrial histology images.
It has been recently shown that recurrent miscarriage can be caused by abnormally high ratio of number of uterine natural killer (UNK) cells to the number of stromal cells in human female uterus lining. Due to high workload, the counting of UNK and stromal cells needs to be automated using computer algorithms. However, stromal cells are very similar in appearance to epithelial cells which must be excluded in the counting process. To exclude the epithelial cells from the counting process it is necessary to identify epithelial regions. There are two types of epithelial layers that can be encountered in the endometrium: luminal epithelium and glandular epithelium. To the best of our knowledge, there is no existing method that addresses the segmentation of both types of epithelium simultaneously in endometrial histology images. In this paper, we propose a multi-resolution Cell Orientation Congruence (COCo) descriptor which exploits the fact that neighbouring epithelial cells exhibit similarity in terms of their orientations. Our experimental results show that the proposed descriptors yield accurate results in simultaneously segmenting both luminal and glandular epithelium.
Department of Computer Science, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK.
Guannan
G
Li
Department of Computer Science, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK. Electronic address: s.e.a.raza@warwick.ac.uk.
Shan E Ahmed
SE
Raza
Department of Computer Science, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK; Department of Pathology, University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire, Coventry, CV2 2DX, UK. Electronic address: N.M.Rajpoot@warwick.ac.uk.
Nasir M
NM
Rajpoot
D000465:Algorithms; D002452:Cell Count; D004717:Endometrium / Q000166:cytology / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000276:immunology; D004847:Epithelial Cells / Q000166:cytology; D004848:Epithelium / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007694:Killer Cells, Natural / Q000166:cytology; D011247:Pregnancy; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D017154:Stromal Cells / Q000166:cytology
Digital pathology; Epithelium segmentation; Histology image analysis; Recurrent miscarriages