A Robust Deep Learning Approach for Accurate Segmentation of Cytoplasm and Nucleus in Noisy Pap Smear Images

Abstract

Cervical cancer poses a significant global health burden, affecting women worldwide. Timely and accurate detection is crucial for effective treatment and improved patient outcomes. The Pap smear test has long been a standard cytology screening method, enabling early cancer diagnosis. However, to enhance quantitative analysis and refine diagnostic capabilities, precise segmentation of the cervical cytoplasm and nucleus using deep learning techniques holds immense promise. This research focuses on addressing the primary challenge of achieving accurate segmentation in the presence of noisy data commonly encountered in Pap smear images. Poisson noise, a prevalent type of noise, corrupts these images, impairing the precise delineation of the cytoplasm and nucleus. Consequently, segmentation boundaries become indistinct, leading to compromised overall accuracy. To overcome these limitations, the utilization of U-Net, a deep learning architecture specifically designed for automatic segmentation, has been proposed. This approach aims to mitigate the adverse effects of Poisson noise on the digitized Pap smear slides. The evaluation of the proposed methodology involved a dataset of 110 Pap smear slides. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach successfully achieves precise segmentation of the nucleus and cytoplasm in noise-free images. By preserving the boundaries of both cellular components, the method facilitates accurate feature extraction, thus contributing to improved diagnostic capabilities. Comparative analysis between noisy and noise-free images reveals the superiority of the presented approach in terms of segmentation accuracy, as measured by various metrics, including the Dice coefficient, specificity, sensitivity, and intersection over union (IoU). The findings of this study underline the potential of deep-learning-based segmentation techniques to enhance cervical cancer diagnosis and pave the way for improved quantitative analysis in this critical field of women’s health.