Whole slide image registration via multi-stained feature matching

Highlights

• Stained tissue sample image registration; towards understanding variability in whole slide images.

• Automatic histological image registration via modified scale-invariant feature transform and feature slope computing.

• Multi-stained feature matching algorithm to analyze histology images combined from various sources, e.g. different biobanks.

• An approach to improve matching accuracy that might be beneficial for computer-aided diagnosis in biobank applications.

Abstract

In the recent decade, medical image registration and fusion process has emerged as an effective application to follow up diseases and decide the necessary therapies based on the conditions of patient. For many of the considerable diagnostic analyses, it is common practice to assess two or more different histological slides or images from one tissue sample. A specific area analysis of two image modalities requires an overlay of the images to distinguish positions in the sample that are organized at a similar coordinate in both images. In particular cases, there are two common challenges in digital pathology: first, dissimilar appearances of images resulting due to staining variances and artifacts; second, large image size. In this paper, we develop algorithm to overcome the fact that scanners from different manufacturers have variations in the images. We propose whole slide image registration algorithm where adaptive smoothing is employed to smooth the stained image. A modified scale-invariant feature transform is applied to extract common information and a joint distance helps to match keypoints correctly by eliminating position transformation error. Finally, the registered image is obtained by utilizing correct correspondences and the interpolation of color intensities. We validate our proposal using different images acquired from surgical resection samples of lung cancer (adenocarcinoma). Extensive feature matching with apparently increasing correct correspondences and registration performance on several images demonstrate the superiority of our method over state-of-the-art methods. Our method potentially improves the matching accuracy that might be beneficial for computer-aided diagnosis in biobank applications.