A dual-path instance segmentation network based on nuclei contour in histology image

Abstract

Accurate segmentation of nuclei in histology images is essential for digital pathology. However, previous work should have considered integrating nuclei contour information into network learning. The main problems are (1) nuclei contour information needs to be fully considered, resulting in inaccurate spatial location of nuclei. (2) Small nuclei in dense regions or irregularly shaped nuclei cannot be segmented. (3) Mainstream networks consider more long-distance semantic information and larger receptive fields and do not consider the fusion of feature maps with different semantics. To solve the above problems, we have proposed a contour-based dual-path instance segmentation network. Firstly we reconstructed the nuclei contour information using algorithms and morphological manipulations. Provide input for subsequent contouring networks. Then we designed a dual-path network. It can extract nuclei features and contour features independently in the encoding stage and fuse the feature maps at different scales in the decoding stage. In the decoding stage, we use the attention module with a newly designed fusion mechanism, which allows us to fuse different semantics of feature maps for simple and efficient fusion. Finally, using the watershed algorithm, we use the network segmentation results to get the instance segmentation results of the nuclei. We used four publicly available datasets, including Kumar, CPM-15, CPM-17, and TNBC, which contain the nuclei of many organs and different forms of nuclei in the human body. Compared with the mainstream methods, we obtained the best AJI metrics, which are 0.656,0.717, and 0.602. In conclocess can effectively improve the performance of the nuclei instance segmentation network. It can accurately locate the scattered nuclei in space with small segmented nuclei in dense regions.