Analysis of Cytology Pap Smear Images Based on Ensemble Deep Learning Approach

Abstract

The fourth most prevalent cancer in women is cervical cancer, and early detection is crucial for effective treatment and prognostic prediction. Conventional cervical cancer screening and classifying methods are less reliable and accurate as they heavily rely on the expertise of a pathologist. As such, colposcopy is an essential part of preventing cervical cancer. Computer-assisted diagnosis is essential for expanding cervical cancer screening because visual screening results in misdiagnosis and low diagnostic effectiveness due to doctors’ increased workloads. Classifying a single cervical cell will overwhelm the physicians, in addition to the existence of overlap between cervical cells, which needs efficient algorithms to separate each cell individually. Focusing on the whole image is the best way and an easy task for the diagnosis. Therefore, looking for new methods to diagnose the whole image is necessary and more accurate. However, existing recognition algorithms do not work well for whole-slide image (WSI) analysis, failing to generalize for different stains and imaging, and displaying subpar clinical-level verification. This paper describes the design of a full ensemble deep learning model for the automatic diagnosis of the WSI. The proposed network discriminates between four classes with high accuracy, reaching up to 99.6%. This work is distinct from existing research in terms of simplicity, accuracy, and speed. It focuses on the whole staining slice image, not on a single cell. The designed deep learning structure considers the slice image with overlapping and non-overlapping cervical cells.