CISCA and CytoDArk0: a Cell Instance Segmentation and Classification method for histo(patho)logical image Analyses and a new, open, Nissl-stained dataset for brain cytoarchitecture studies
This work addresses the challenge of delineating and classifying individual cells in microscopy tissue images, which is essential for medical and neuroscientific research, by providing a robust method and a new dataset, though it is incremental in combining existing techniques.
The authors tackled the problem of automatic cell instance segmentation and classification in histological images by proposing a new deep learning framework called CISCA, which demonstrated versatility and accuracy across diverse datasets and staining techniques. They also introduced CytoDArk0, a new annotated dataset of Nissl-stained brain images with nearly 40k annotated cells to facilitate research in neuropathology and cytoarchitecture.
Delineating and classifying individual cells in microscopy tissue images is inherently challenging yet remains essential for advancements in medical and neuroscientific research. In this work, we propose a new deep learning framework, CISCA, for automatic cell instance segmentation and classification in histological slices. At the core of CISCA is a network architecture featuring a lightweight U-Net with three heads in the decoder. The first head classifies pixels into boundaries between neighboring cells, cell bodies, and background, while the second head regresses four distance maps along four directions. The outputs from the first and second heads are integrated through a tailored post-processing step, which ultimately produces the segmentation of individual cells. The third head enables the simultaneous classification of cells into relevant classes, if required. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method using four datasets, including CoNIC, PanNuke, and MoNuSeg, which are publicly available H&Estained datasets that cover diverse tissue types and magnifications. In addition, we introduce CytoDArk0, the first annotated dataset of Nissl-stained histological images of the mammalian brain, containing nearly 40k annotated neurons and glia cells, aimed at facilitating advancements in digital neuropathology and brain cytoarchitecture studies. We evaluate CISCA against other state-of-the-art methods, demonstrating its versatility, robustness, and accuracy in segmenting and classifying cells across diverse tissue types, magnifications, and staining techniques. This makes CISCA well-suited for detailed analyses of cell morphology and efficient cell counting in both digital pathology workflows and brain cytoarchitecture research.