Background With the gradual increase of infertility in the world, among which male sperm problems are the main factor for infertility, more and more couples are using computer-assisted sperm analysis (CASA) to assist in the analysis and treatment of infertility. Meanwhile, the rapid development of deep learning (DL) has led to strong results in image classification tasks. However, the classification of sperm images has not been well studied in current deep learning methods, and the sperm images are often affected by noise in practical CASA applications. The purpose of this article is to investigate the anti-noise robustness of deep learning classification methods applied on sperm images.Methods The SVIA dataset is a publicly available large-scale sperm dataset containing three subsets. In this work, we used subset-C, which provides more than 125,000 independent images of sperms and impurities, including 121,401 sperm images and 4,479 impurity images. To investigate the anti-noise robustness of deep learning classification methods applied on sperm images, we conducted a comprehensive comparative study of sperm images using many convolutional neural network (CNN) and visual transformer (VT) deep learning methods to find the deep learning model with the most stable anti-noise robustness.Results This study proved that VT had strong robustness for the classification of tiny object (sperm and impurity) image datasets under some types of conventional noise and some adversarial attacks. In particular, under the influence of Poisson noise, accuracy changed from 91.45% to 91.08%, impurity precison changed from 92.7% to 91.3%, impurity recall changed from 88.8% to 89.5%, and impurity F1-score changed 90.7% to 90.4%. Meanwhile, sperm precision changed from 90.9% to 90.5%, sperm recall changed from 92.5% to 93.8%, and sperm F1-score changed from 92.1% to 90.4%.Conclusion Sperm image classification may be strongly affected by noise in current deep learning methods; the robustness with regard to noise of VT methods based on global information is greater than that of CNN methods based on local information, indicating that the robustness with regard to noise is reflected mainly in global information.

Blood testing has always been one of the important methods for disease diagnosis, but currently, blood testing instruments face the problems of long time consumption, complex processes, and limited detection types. Therefore, a blood cell dataset for artificial intelligence is necessary. Peripheral Blood Cell Image Dataset (PBCI-DS) provides a total of 17092 images of 8 categories of peripheral blood cells and corresponding cell labeling files. The purpose of PBCI-DS is to serve as a training model for object detection. The experiment uses four YOLO series models (YOLO-v5s, YOLO-v5l, YOLO-v6, YOLO-v7) and SSD models of deep learning methods to train the database, and compares and evaluates the results to prove the effectiveness and usability of PBCI-DS.

Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer among women, and cytopathological images are often used to screen for this cancer. However, manual examination is very troublesome and the misdiagnosis rate is high. In addition, cervical cancer nest cells are denser and more complex, with high overlap and opacity, increasing the difficulty of identification. The appearance of the computer aided automatic diagnosis system solves this problem. In this paper, a weakly supervised cervical cancer nest image identification approach using Conjugated Attention Mechanism and Visual Transformer (CAM-VT), which can analyze pap slides quickly and accurately. CAM-VT proposes conjugated attention mechanism and visual transformer modules for local and global feature extraction respectively, and then designs an ensemble learning module to further improve the identification capability. In order to determine a reasonable interpretation, comparative experiments are conducted on our datasets. The average accuracy of the validation set of three repeated experiments using CAM-VT framework is 88.92%, which is higher than the optimal result of 22 well-known deep learning models. Moreover, we conduct ablation experiments and extended experiments on Hematoxylin and Eosin stained gastric histopathological image datasets to verify the ability and generalization ability of the framework. Finally, the top 5 and top 10 positive probability values of cervical nests are 97.36% and 96.84%, which have important clinical and practical significance. The experimental results show that the proposed CAM-VT framework has excellent performance in potential cervical cancer nest image identification tasks for practical clinical work.

Blood testing is an important basis for the diagnosis of many diseases. However, the accuracy of detection instruments in hospitals is often not high, and manual detection of blood samples is sometimes necessary. The whole detection process is not only time-consuming, but also limited in terms of the types of detection. The addition of Deep Convolution Neural Network (DCNN) can quickly and accurately detect blood cells. This study designs a Lightweight Cell Detection Model with Full-connection and Dropconnect (LFD-CD) to achieve the detection task of the peripheral blood cell dataset. In the detection of 8 categories, the model is optimized by adding the full connection layer and Dropconnect model, and the accuracy of the LFD-CD results achieves 99.3

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE:Colorectal cancer has become the third most common cancer worldwide, accounting for approximately 10% of cancer patients. Early detection of the disease is important for the treatment of colorectal cancer patients. Histopathological examination is the gold standard for screening colorectal cancer. However, the current lack of histopathological image datasets of colorectal cancer, especially enteroscope biopsies, hinders the accurate evaluation of computer-aided diagnosis techniques. Therefore, a multi-category colorectal cancer dataset is needed to test various medical image classification methods to find high classification accuracy and strong robustness.METHODS:A new publicly available Enteroscope Biopsy Histopathological H&E Image Dataset (EBHI) is published in this paper. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the EBHI dataset, we have utilized several machine learning, convolutional neural networks and novel transformer-based classifiers for experimentation and evaluation, using an image with a magnification of 200×.RESULTS:Experimental results show that the deep learning method performs well on the EBHI dataset. Classical machine learning methods achieve maximum accuracy of 76.02% and deep learning method achieves a maximum accuracy of 95.37%.CONCLUSION:To the best of our knowledge, EBHI is the first publicly available colorectal histopathology enteroscope biopsy dataset with four magnifications and five types of images of tumor differentiation stages, totaling 5532 images. We believe that EBHI could attract researchers to explore new classification algorithms for the automated diagnosis of colorectal cancer, which could help physicians and patients in clinical settings.

Microscopic image analysis technology helps solve the inadvertences of artificial traditional methods in disease, wastewater treatment, and environmental change monitoring analysis. Convolutional neural network (CNN) play an important role in microscopic image analysis. Image segmentation, in which U-Net is increasingly applied in microscopic image segmentation, is a crucial step in detection, tracking, monitoring, feature extraction, modelling, and analysis. This paper comprehensively reviews the development history of U-Net, analyses several research results of various segmentation methods since the emergence of U-Net, and conducts a comprehensive review of related papers. This paper summarised the improved methods of U-Net and then listed the existing significance of image segmentation techniques and their improvements introduced over the years. Finally, focusing on the different improvement strategies of U-Net in different papers, the related work of each application target is reviewed according to detailed technical categories to facilitate future research. Researchers can see the dynamics of the transmission of technological development and keep up with future trends in this interdisciplinary field.

Computer-Aided Sperm Analysis (CASA) is a widely studied topic in the diagnosis and treatment of male reproductive health. Although CASA has been evolving, there is still a lack of publicly available large-scale image datasets for CASA. To fill this gap, we provide the Sperm Videos and Images Analysis (SVIA) dataset, including three different subsets, subset-A, subset-B and subset-C, to test and evaluate different computer vision techniques in CASA. For subset-A, in order to test and evaluate the effectiveness of SVIA dataset for object detection, we use five representative object detection models and four commonly used evaluation metrics. For subset-B, in order to test and evaluate the effectiveness of SVIA dataset for image segmentation, we used eight representative methods and three standard evaluation metrics. Moreover, to test and evaluate the effectiveness of SVIA dataset for object tracking, we have employed the traditional kNN with progressive sperm (PR) as an evaluation metric and two deep learning models with three standard evaluation metrics. For subset-C, to prove the effectiveness of SVIA dataset for image denoising, nine denoising filters are used to denoise thirteen kinds of noise, and the mean structural similarity is calculated for evaluation. At the same time, to test and evaluate the effectiveness of SVIA dataset for image classification, we evaluate the results of twelve convolutional neural network models and six visual transformer models using four commonly used evaluation metrics. Through a series of experimental analyses and comparisons in this paper, it can be concluded that this proposed dataset can evaluate not only the functions of object detection, image segmentation, object tracking, image denoising, and image classification but also the robustness of object detection and image classification models. Therefore, SVIA dataset can fill the gap of the lack of large-scale public datasets in CASA and promote the development of CASA. Dataset is available at: https://github.com/Demozsj/Detection-Sperm.

In recent years, colorectal cancer has become one of the most significant diseases that endanger human health. Deep learning methods are increasingly important for the classification of colorectal histopathology images. However, existing approaches focus more on end-to-end automatic classification using computers rather than human-computer interaction. In this paper, we propose an IL-MCAM framework. It is based on attention mechanisms and interactive learning. The proposed IL-MCAM framework includes two stages: automatic learning (AL) and interactivity learning (IL). In the AL stage, a multi-channel attention mechanism model containing three different attention mechanism channels and convolutional neural networks is used to extract multi-channel features for classification. In the IL stage, the proposed IL-MCAM framework continuously adds misclassified images to the training set in an interactive approach, which improves the classification ability of the MCAM model. We carried out a comparison experiment on our dataset and an extended experiment on the HE-NCT-CRC-100K dataset to verify the performance of the proposed IL-MCAM framework, achieving classification accuracies of 98.98% and 99.77%, respectively. In addition, we conducted an ablation experiment and an interchangeability experiment to verify the ability and interchangeability of the three channels. The experimental results show that the proposed IL-MCAM framework has excellent performance in the colorectal histopathological image classification tasks.

Cervical cancer is a very common cancer among women. Cytopathologists use a microscope to examine cell slides collected from the patient’s cervix to determine if it is cancerous. However, manually checking the slides to diagnose cancer is a very difficult task, not only time-consuming but also error-prone. A computer-aided diagnosis system can automatically and accurately screen cervical cell images. In this study, we propose a framework called DVT to perform classification tasks. We use SIPaKMeD and CRIC datasets together. On 11-class classification tasks, DVT achieves an accuracy of 87.35

IntroductionGastric cancer is the fifth most common cancer in the world. At the same time, it is also the fourth most deadly cancer. Early detection of cancer exists as a guide for the treatment of gastric cancer. Nowadays, computer technology has advanced rapidly to assist physicians in the diagnosis of pathological pictures of gastric cancer. Ensemble learning is a way to improve the accuracy of algorithms, and finding multiple learning models with complementarity types is the basis of ensemble learning. Therefore, this paper compares the performance of multiple algorithms in anticipation of applying ensemble learning to a practical gastric cancer classification problem.MethodsThe complementarity of sub-size pathology image classifiers when machine performance is insufficient is explored in this experimental platform. We choose seven classical machine learning classifiers and four deep learning classifiers for classification experiments on the GasHisSDB database. Among them, classical machine learning algorithms extract five different image virtual features to match multiple classifier algorithms. For deep learning, we choose three convolutional neural network classifiers. In addition, we also choose a novel Transformer-based classifier.ResultsThe experimental platform, in which a large number of classical machine learning and deep learning methods are performed, demonstrates that there are differences in the performance of different classifiers on GasHisSDB. Classical machine learning models exist for classifiers that classify Abnormal categories very well, while classifiers that excel in classifying Normal categories also exist. Deep learning models also exist with multiple models that can be complementarity.DiscussionSuitable classifiers are selected for ensemble learning, when machine performance is insufficient. This experimental platform demonstrates that multiple classifiers are indeed complementarity and can improve the efficiency of ensemble learning. This can better assist doctors in diagnosis, improve the detection of gastric cancer, and increase the cure rate.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE:Gastric cancer is the fifth most common cancer globally, and early detection of gastric cancer is essential to save lives. Histopathological examination of gastric cancer is the gold standard for the diagnosis of gastric cancer. However, computer-aided diagnostic techniques are challenging to evaluate due to the scarcity of publicly available gastric histopathology image datasets.METHODS:In this paper, a noble publicly available Gastric Histopathology Sub-size Image Database (GasHisSDB) is published to identify classifiers' performance. Specifically, two types of data are included: normal and abnormal, with a total of 245,196 tissue case images. In order to prove that the methods of different periods in the field of image classification have discrepancies on GasHisSDB, we select a variety of classifiers for evaluation. Seven classical machine learning classifiers, three Convolutional Neural Network classifiers, and a novel transformer-based classifier are selected for testing on image classification tasks.RESULTS:This study performed extensive experiments using traditional machine learning and deep learning methods to prove that the methods of different periods have discrepancies on GasHisSDB. Traditional machine learning achieved the best accuracy rate of 86.08% and a minimum of just 41.12%. The best accuracy of deep learning reached 96.47% and the lowest was 86.21%. Accuracy rates vary significantly across classifiers.CONCLUSIONS:To the best of our knowledge, it is the first publicly available gastric cancer histopathology dataset containing a large number of images for weakly supervised learning. We believe that GasHisSDB can attract researchers to explore new algorithms for the automated diagnosis of gastric cancer, which can help physicians and patients in the clinical setting.

Cervical cancer is the seventh most common cancer among all the cancers worldwide and the fourth most common cancer among women. Cervical cytopathology image classification is an important method to diagnose cervical cancer. Manual screening of cytopathology images is time-consuming and error-prone. The emergence of the automatic computer-aided diagnosis system solves this problem. This paper proposes a framework called CVM-Cervix based on deep learning to perform cervical cell classification tasks. It can analyze pap slides quickly and accurately. CVM-Cervix first proposes a Convolutional Neural Network module and a Visual Transformer module for local and global feature extraction respectively, then a Multilayer Perceptron module is designed to fuse the local and global features for the final classification. Experimental results show the effectiveness and potential of the proposed CVM-Cervix in the field of cervical Pap smear image classification. In addition, according to the practical needs of clinical work, we perform a lightweight post-processing to compress the model.

In this paper, a multi-scale visual transformer model, referred as GasHis-Transformer, is proposed for Gastric Histopathological Image Detection (GHID), which enables the automatic global detection of gastric cancer images. GasHis-Transformer model consists of two key modules designed to extract global and local information using a position-encoded transformer model and a convolutional neural network with local convolution, respectively. A publicly available hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) stained gastric histopathological image dataset is used in the experiment. Furthermore, a Dropconnect based lightweight network is proposed to reduce the model size and training time of GasHis-Transformer for clinical applications with improved confidence. Moreover, a series of contrast and extended experiments verify the robustness, extensibility and stability of GasHis-Transformer. In conclusion, GasHis-Transformer demonstrates high global detection performance and shows its significant potential in GHID task.(c) 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

aMicroscopic Image and Medical Image Analysis Group, MBIE College, Northeastern University, 110169, Shenyang, PR China bDepartment of Pathology, Cancer Hospital, China Medical University, Liaoning Cancer Hospital and Institute, Shenyang 110042, PR China cDepartment of Computer Science and Technology, Heilongjiang University, Harbin, Heilongjiang, 150080, China dDepartment of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA eInstitute of Medical Informatics, University of Luebeck, Luebeck, Germany

Cervical cancer is a very common and fatal type of cancer in women. Cytopathology images are often used to screen for this cancer. Given that there is a possibility that many errors can occur during manual screening, a computer-aided diagnosis system based on deep learning has been developed. Deep learning methods require a fixed dimension of input images, but the dimensions of clinical medical images are inconsistent. The aspect ratios of the images suffer while resizing them directly. Clinically, the aspect ratios of cells inside cytopathological images provide important information for doctors to diagnose cancer. Therefore, it is difficult to resize directly. However, many existing studies have resized the images directly and have obtained highly robust classification results. To determine a reasonable interpretation, we have conducted a series of comparative experiments. First, the raw data of the SIPaKMeD dataset are pre-processed to obtain standard and scaled datasets. Then, the datasets are resized to 224 x 224 pixels. Finally, 22 deep learning models are used to classify the standard and scaled datasets. The results of the study indicate that deep learning models are robust to changes in the aspect ratio of cells in cervical cytopathological images. This conclusion is also validated via the Herlev dataset.

Image classification has achieved unprecedented advance with the the rapid development of deep learning. However, the classification of tiny object images is still not well investigated. In this paper, we first briefly review the development of Convolutional Neural Network and Visual Transformer in deep learning, and introduce the sources and development of conventional noises and adversarial attacks. Then we use various models of Convolutional Neural Network and Visual Transformer to conduct a series of experiments on the image dataset of tiny objects (sperms and impurities), and compare various evaluation metrics in the experimental results to obtain a model with stable performance. Finally, we discuss the problems in the classification of tiny objects and make a prospect for the classification of tiny objects in the future.