The number of new cases of thyroid cancer are dramatically increasing as incidences of this cancer have more than doubled since the early 1970s. Tall cell variant (TCV-PTC) papillary thyroid carcinoma is one type of thyroid cancer that is more aggressive and usually associated with higher local recurrence and distant metastasis. This variant can be identified through visual characteristics of cells in histological images. Thus, we created a fully automatic algorithm that is able to segment cells using a multi-stage approach. Our method learns the statistical characteristics of nuclei and cells during the segmentation process and utilizes this information for a more accurate result. Furthermore, we are able to analyze the detected regions and extract characteristic cell data that can be used to assist in clinical diagnosis.

Date Published: 19 March 2015
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 9420, Medical Imaging 2015: Digital Pathology, 94200A (19 March 2015); doi: 10.1117/12.2082156

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9420:
Medical Imaging 2015: Digital Pathology
Metin N. Gurcan; Anant Madabhushi, Editor(s)