Context-constrained multiple instance learning for histopathology image segmentation

Med Image Comput Comput Assist Interv. 2012;15(Pt 3):623-30. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-33454-2_77.

Abstract

Histopathology image segmentation plays a very important role in cancer diagnosis and therapeutic treatment. Existing supervised approaches for image segmentation require a large amount of high quality manual delineations (on pixels), which is often hard to obtain. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm along the line of weakly supervised learning; we introduce context constraints as a prior for multiple instance learning (ccMIL), which significantly reduces the ambiguity in weak supervision (a 20% gain); our method utilizes image-level labels to learn an integrated model to perform histopathology cancer image segmentation, clustering, and classification. Experimental results on colon histopathology images demonstrate the great advantages of ccMIL.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms*
  • Artificial Intelligence*
  • Colonic Neoplasms / pathology*
  • Humans
  • Image Enhancement / methods
  • Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / methods*
  • Microscopy / methods*
  • Pattern Recognition, Automated / methods*
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Sensitivity and Specificity