Context-aware stacked convolutional neural networks for classification of breast carcinomas in whole-slide histopathology images

Babak Ehteshami Bejnordi; Guido Zuidhof; Maschenka Balkenhol; Meyke Hermsen; Peter Bult; Bram van Ginneken; Nico Karssemeijer; Geert Litjens; Jeroen van der Laak

doi:10.1117/1.JMI.4.4.044504

14 December 2017 Context-aware stacked convolutional neural networks for classification of breast carcinomas in whole-slide histopathology images

Babak Ehteshami Bejnordi, Guido Zuidhof, Maschenka Balkenhol, Meyke Hermsen, Peter Bult, Bram van Ginneken, Nico Karssemeijer, Geert Litjens, Jeroen van der Laak

Author Affiliations +

Journal of Medical Imaging, Vol. 4, Issue 4, 044504 (December 2017). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JMI.4.4.044504

Abstract

Currently, histopathological tissue examination by a pathologist represents the gold standard for breast lesion diagnostics. Automated classification of histopathological whole-slide images (WSIs) is challenging owing to the wide range of appearances of benign lesions and the visual similarity of ductal carcinoma in-situ (DCIS) to invasive lesions at the cellular level. Consequently, analysis of tissue at high resolutions with a large contextual area is necessary. We present context-aware stacked convolutional neural networks (CNN) for classification of breast WSIs into normal/benign, DCIS, and invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC). We first train a CNN using high pixel resolution to capture cellular level information. The feature responses generated by this model are then fed as input to a second CNN, stacked on top of the first. Training of this stacked architecture with large input patches enables learning of fine-grained (cellular) details and global tissue structures. Our system is trained and evaluated on a dataset containing 221 WSIs of hematoxylin and eosin stained breast tissue specimens. The system achieves an AUC of 0.962 for the binary classification of nonmalignant and malignant slides and obtains a three-class accuracy of 81.3% for classification of WSIs into normal/benign, DCIS, and IDC, demonstrating its potential for routine diagnostics.

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Babak Ehteshami Bejnordi, Guido Zuidhof, Maschenka Balkenhol, Meyke Hermsen, Peter Bult, Bram van Ginneken, Nico Karssemeijer, Geert Litjens, and Jeroen van der Laak "Context-aware stacked convolutional neural networks for classification of breast carcinomas in whole-slide histopathology images," Journal of Medical Imaging 4(4), 044504 (14 December 2017). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JMI.4.4.044504

Received: 9 May 2017; Accepted: 14 November 2017; Published: 14 December 2017

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