Tissue object patterns for segmentation in histopathological images

Abstract

In the current practice of medicine, histopathological examination is the gold standard for routine clinical diagnosis and grading of cancer. However, as this examination involves the visual analysis of biopsies, it is subject to a considerable amount of observer variability. In order to decrease the variability, it has been proposed to develop systems that mathematically model the histopathological tissue images and automate the analysis. Segmentation constitutes the first step for most of these automated systems. Nevertheless, the segmentation in histopathological images remains a challenging task since these images typically show variances due to their complex nature and may include a large amount of noise and artifacts due to the tissue preparation procedures. In our research group, we recently developed different segmentation algorithms that rely on representing a tissue image with a set of tissue objects and using the structural pattern of these objects in segmentation. In this paper, we review these segmentation algorithms, discussing their clinical demonstrations on colon tissues.