Toward interpretable and generalized mitosis detection in digital pathology using deep learning

Abstract

Objective The mitotic activity index is an important prognostic factor in the diagnosis of cancer. The task of mitosis detection is difficult as the nuclei are microscopic in size and partially labeled, and there are many more non-mitotic nuclei compared to mitotic ones. In this paper, we highlight the challenges of current mitosis detection pipelines and propose a method to tackle these challenges. Methods Our proposed methodology is inspired from recent research on deep learning and an extensive analysis on the dataset and training pipeline. We first used the MiDoG′22 dataset for training, validation, and testing. We then tested the methodology without fine-tuning on the TUPAC′16 dataset and on a real-time case from Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Centre. Results Our methodology has shown promising results both quantitatively and qualitatively. Quantitatively, our methodology achieved an F1-score of 0.87 on the MiDoG'22 dataset and an F1-score of 0.83 on the TUPAC dataset. Qualitatively, our methodology is generalizable and interpretable across various datasets and clinical settings. Conclusion In this paper, we highlight the challenges of current mitosis detection pipelines and propose a method that can accurately predict mitotic nuclei. We illustrate the accuracy, generalizability, and interpretability of our approach across various datasets and clinical settings. Our methodology can speed up the adoption of computer-aided digital pathology in clinical settings.