VB-SOLO: Single-Stage Instance Segmentation of Overlapping Epithelial Cells

The instance segmentation of overlapping cells in smear images of epithelial cells is challenging due to the significant overlap and adhesion between the cells’ translucent cytoplasm. In this paper, an improved single-stage instance segmentation network called VoVNet-BiFPN-SOLO (VB-SOLO)...

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Main Authors: Lichuan Li, Wei Chen, Jie Qi
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2024-01-01
Series:IEEE Access
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10496694/
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author Lichuan Li
Wei Chen
Jie Qi
author_facet Lichuan Li
Wei Chen
Jie Qi
author_sort Lichuan Li
collection DOAJ
description The instance segmentation of overlapping cells in smear images of epithelial cells is challenging due to the significant overlap and adhesion between the cells’ translucent cytoplasm. In this paper, an improved single-stage instance segmentation network called VoVNet-BiFPN-SOLO (VB-SOLO) is proposed to address this problem. The model takes SOLOv2 model as its main frame. Firstly, the backbone network uses Efficient Channel Attention (ECA) to optimize the VoVNetv2 network to increase the information interaction across channels and enhance the extraction of cell instance features. Secondly, the bi-directional feature pyramid network (BiFPN) is introduced to connect with the new backbone. BiFPN can achieve the weighted fusion of features with different resolutions from bottom to top and keep more shallow semantic information in the network. Finally, the Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM) is added to the mask branch to improve cell segmentation results in feature maps. Experimental results on the publicly available datasets CISD and Cx22 demonstrate the effectiveness of the VB-SOLO model, achieving a DCP of 0.966 and 0.940 and a FNRO of 0.055 and 0.03. Compared to the original SOLOv2 algorithm, the proposed method achieved improvements in DCP of 1.3% and 1.1% respectively. Additionally, comparative tests with multiple instance segmentation networks have shown that the proposed improved network can achieve a better balance between segmentation accuracy and efficiency. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed network improvements and the potential of single-stage instance segmentation networks in overlapping cell image segmentation.
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spelling doaj.art-de2af7ff074145c9a4cd29f1a30ff33c2024-04-17T23:00:12ZengIEEEIEEE Access2169-35362024-01-0112525555256410.1109/ACCESS.2024.338783210496694VB-SOLO: Single-Stage Instance Segmentation of Overlapping Epithelial CellsLichuan Li0https://orcid.org/0009-0001-2353-8626Wei Chen1https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5382-0542Jie Qi2School of Communication and Information Engineering, Xi’an University of Science and Technology, Xi’an, Shaanxi, ChinaSchool of Communication and Information Engineering, Xi’an University of Science and Technology, Xi’an, Shaanxi, ChinaOrthopedic Department, Shaanxi Provincial People’s Hospital, Xi’an, ChinaThe instance segmentation of overlapping cells in smear images of epithelial cells is challenging due to the significant overlap and adhesion between the cells’ translucent cytoplasm. In this paper, an improved single-stage instance segmentation network called VoVNet-BiFPN-SOLO (VB-SOLO) is proposed to address this problem. The model takes SOLOv2 model as its main frame. Firstly, the backbone network uses Efficient Channel Attention (ECA) to optimize the VoVNetv2 network to increase the information interaction across channels and enhance the extraction of cell instance features. Secondly, the bi-directional feature pyramid network (BiFPN) is introduced to connect with the new backbone. BiFPN can achieve the weighted fusion of features with different resolutions from bottom to top and keep more shallow semantic information in the network. Finally, the Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM) is added to the mask branch to improve cell segmentation results in feature maps. Experimental results on the publicly available datasets CISD and Cx22 demonstrate the effectiveness of the VB-SOLO model, achieving a DCP of 0.966 and 0.940 and a FNRO of 0.055 and 0.03. Compared to the original SOLOv2 algorithm, the proposed method achieved improvements in DCP of 1.3% and 1.1% respectively. Additionally, comparative tests with multiple instance segmentation networks have shown that the proposed improved network can achieve a better balance between segmentation accuracy and efficiency. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed network improvements and the potential of single-stage instance segmentation networks in overlapping cell image segmentation.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10496694/Biomedical imagingcervical cancerconvolutional neural networksdeep learningimage segmentationinstance segmentation
spellingShingle Lichuan Li
Wei Chen
Jie Qi
VB-SOLO: Single-Stage Instance Segmentation of Overlapping Epithelial Cells
IEEE Access
Biomedical imaging
cervical cancer
convolutional neural networks
deep learning
image segmentation
instance segmentation
title VB-SOLO: Single-Stage Instance Segmentation of Overlapping Epithelial Cells
title_full VB-SOLO: Single-Stage Instance Segmentation of Overlapping Epithelial Cells
title_fullStr VB-SOLO: Single-Stage Instance Segmentation of Overlapping Epithelial Cells
title_full_unstemmed VB-SOLO: Single-Stage Instance Segmentation of Overlapping Epithelial Cells
title_short VB-SOLO: Single-Stage Instance Segmentation of Overlapping Epithelial Cells
title_sort vb solo single stage instance segmentation of overlapping epithelial cells
topic Biomedical imaging
cervical cancer
convolutional neural networks
deep learning
image segmentation
instance segmentation
url https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10496694/
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