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Quick Annotator: an open-source digital pathology based rapid image annotation tool

delete2021-07-19
delete13
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OA
AI
R
Runtian Miao
R
Róbert Tóth
周玉 (Yu Zhou)
A
Anant Madabhushi
A
Andrew Janowczyk *
DOI:10.1002/cjp2.229delete
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Abstract

Abstract

En 中文
Image-based biomarker discovery typically requires accurate segmentation of histologic structures (e.g. cell nuclei, tubules, and epithelial regions) in digital pathology whole slide images (WSIs). Unfortunately, annotating each structure of interest is laborious and often intractable even in moderately sized cohorts. Here, we present an open-source tool, Quick Annotator (QA), designed to improve annotation efficiency of histologic structures by orders of magnitude. While the user annotates regions of interest (ROIs) via an intuitive web interface, a deep learning (DL) model is concurrently optimized using these annotations and applied to the ROI. The user iteratively reviews DL results to either (1) accept accurately annotated regions or (2) correct erroneously segmented structures to improve subsequent model suggestions, before transitioning to other ROIs. We demonstrate the effectiveness of QA over comparable manual efforts via three use cases. These include annotating (1) 337,386 nuclei in 5 pancreatic WSIs, (2) 5,692 tubules in 10 colorectal WSIs, and (3) 14,187 regions of epithelium in 10 breast WSIs. Efficiency gains in terms of annotations per second of 102x, 9x, and 39x were, respectively, witnessed while retaining f-scores >0.95, suggesting that QA may be a valuable tool for efficiently fully annotating WSIs employed in downstream biomarker studies.
Keywords:
digital pathology
computational pathology
deep learning
active learning
annotations
open-source tool
nuclei
epithelium
tubules
efficiency
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Journal

Journal of Pathology Clinical Research cover
Journal of Pathology Clinical Research
IF:
3.7
Papers:
340
Citations:
1.1K

Organization

U
University System of Ohio
Scholars:
15.4W
Papers: 13.0W
Citations: 200
C
Case Western Reserve University
Scholars:
2.1W
Papers: 1.6W
Citations: 3.4W