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GeNSeg-Net: A General Segmentation Framework for Any Nucleus in Immunohistochemistry Images

Published: 28 October 2024 Publication History

Abstract

Immunohistochemistry (IHC) plays a crucial role in understanding disease mechanisms, diagnosing pathology and guiding treatment decisions. The precise analysis heavily depends on accurate nucleus segmentation. However, segmentation is challenging due to significant inter- and intra-nucleus variability in morphology and distribution, stemming from inherent characteristics, imaging techniques, tissue differences and other factors. While current deep learning-based methods have shown promising results, their generalization performance is limited, inevitably requiring specific training data. To address the problem, we propose a novel Ge neral framework for Nucleus Seg mentation in IHC images (GeNSeg-Net). GeNSeg-Net effectively segments nuclei across diverse tissue types and imaging techniques with high variability using a small subset for training. It comprises an enhancement model and a segmentation model. Initially, all nuclei are enhanced to a uniform morphology with distinct features by the enhancement model through generation. The subsequent segmentation task is thereby simplified, leading to higher accuracy. We design a lightweight generator and discriminator to improve both enhancement quality and computational efficiency. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of each component within GeNSeg-Net. Compared to existing methods, GeNSeg-Net achieves state-of-the-art (SOTA) segmentation accuracy and generalization performance on both private and public datasets, while maintaining highly competitive processing speed. Code is available at https://github.com/SikangSHU/GeNSeg-Net.

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cover image ACM Conferences
MM '24: Proceedings of the 32nd ACM International Conference on Multimedia
October 2024
11719 pages
ISBN:9798400706868
DOI:10.1145/3664647
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Published: 28 October 2024

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Author Tags

  1. generative adversarial network
  2. immunohistochemistry images
  3. nucleus segmentation

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MM '24: The 32nd ACM International Conference on Multimedia
October 28 - November 1, 2024
Melbourne VIC, Australia

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MM '24 Paper Acceptance Rate 1,150 of 4,385 submissions, 26%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 2,145 of 8,556 submissions, 25%

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