Automated assessment of breast cancer lymphatic infiltration by H&E image

Abstract

The occurrence of invasive breast cancer and lymphatic infiltration is highly relative. Although medical screening and imaging technology has been considerable progress, there are still many patients with metastasis phenomenon of axillary lymph gland at the first inspection of breast cancer. In order to avoid breast cancer cells transferring by lymphatic system, physicians recommend breast cancer patients lymphadenectomy. However, it is estimated that about 70% in early breast cancer patients undergoing unnecessary lymphadenectomy. At present, lymphatic infiltration examination is performed via microscopes and concludes the results by physician experience and expertise. It is time consuming, labor intensive, and prone to inter-observer discrepancy. Therefore, in this article, we present a multistage model of automatic system of lymphatic infiltration assessment. And the experimental results not only prove the agreement of the lymphatic infiltration between the proposed scheme and expert pathologist but also confirmed that this system can greatly reduce the clinician's burden.