IP Library Granted Patent US 12,424,323
Granted Patent B2
US 12,424,323 · App. 18/125,043 · Granted Sep 23, 2025

Hybrid and accelerated ground-truth generation for duplex arrays

Inventors: Qinle Ba (San Mateo, CA); Jim F. Martin (Mountain View, CA); Satarupa Mukherjee (Fremont, CA); Yao Nie (Sunnyvale, CA); Xiangxue Wang (Cleveland Heights, OH); Mohammadhassan Izady Yazdanabadi (Palo Alto, CA)
Assignee: Ventana Medical Systems, Inc.
G16H50/20G06V10/774G06V10/945G06V20/695G06V20/698G06V20/70G06V2201/03
View Patent ↗
Loading inventors, assignments & file history…
Monitor This Case
Get email alerts when status or documents change.
Order Certified Copies
Most orders are placed with the USPTO same day — all within 24 business hours.
Order via The Patent Place →
Pre-filled with this patent's details
Quick Facts
Patent No.
US 12,424,323
App. No.
18/125,043
Granted
Sep 23, 2025
Kind
B2
Abstract

Methods and systems can include: accessing a digital pathology image; generating, using a first machine-learning model, a segmented image that identifies at least: a predicted diseased region and a background region in the digital pathology image; detecting depictions of a set of cells in the digital pathology image; generating, using a second machine-learning model, a cell classification for each cell of the set of cells, wherein the cell classification is selected from a set of potential classifications that indicate which, if any, of a set of biomarkers are expressed in the cell; detecting that a subset of the set of cells are within the background region; and updating the cell classification for each cell of at least some cells in the subset to be a background classification that was not included in the set of potential classifications.

Claims (77)

1. A computer-implemented method comprising:

accessing a digital pathology image that depicts a tissue slice stained with multiple stains, each of the multiple stains staining for a corresponding biomarker of a set of biomarkers, wherein the multiple stains include at least three stains;

generating, using a first machine-learning model, a segmented image that identifies at least:

a predicted diseased region in the digital pathology image; and

a background region in the digital pathology image, wherein the background region indicates that signals that are present within the background region are not to be assessed when analyzing signals of the set of biomarkers;

detecting depictions of a set of cells in the digital pathology image;

generating, using a second machine-learning model, a cell classification for each cell of the set of cells, wherein the cell classification is selected from a set of potential classifications that indicate which, if any, of the set of biomarkers are expressed in the cell;

detecting that a subset of the set of cells in the digital pathology image are within the background region; and

in response to detecting that the subset of the set of cells in the digital pathology image are within the background region, updating the cell classification for each cell of at least some cells in the subset to be a background classification that was not included in the set of potential classifications.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , further comprising:

generating a training data set that includes the digital pathology and that includes an updated set of cell classifications that includes the updated cell classification for each cell in the subset;

training a third machine-learning model using the training data set.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 2 , further comprising:

detecting that each cell in another subset of cells in the digital pathology image has a cell classification that is inconsistent with a region in which the cell is depicted as being located; and

setting a confidence metric for the cell classification of each cell in the other subset to be lower than a confidence level associated with different cell classifications that were not detected as being inconsistent with the region in which the cell is depicted as being located;

wherein the third machine-learning model is trained using the confidence metrics.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 2 , further comprising:

generating a new set of cell classifications by processing a different digital-pathology image using the third machine-learning model, wherein a new subset of the new set of cell classifications correspond to the background classification; and

generating one or more metrics corresponding to a predicted diagnosis, prognosis or treatment response using the new set of cell classifications; and

outputting the one or more metrics.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 2 , wherein the third machine-learning model includes a U-Net architecture.

6. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein updating the cell classification for each cell of the at least some cells in the subset to the background classification includes automatically update the cell classification for each cell of all cells in the subset to the background classification.

7. The computer implemented method of claim 1 , further comprising:

configuring a graphical user interface (GUI) to present an interactive screen that:

displays at least part of the segmented image;

displays, for each of at least some of the set of cells, a representation of the cell that indicates both the cell classification and a location of the depiction of the cell in the digital pathology image; and

provides a tool configured to receive input from a user that indicates an instruction to change one or more of the cell classifications of the at least some of the set of cells;

detecting an interaction with the tool that represents an instruction to change the cell classification of a particular cell of the at least some of the set of cells; and

updating, in response to the detected interaction, the changed cell classification for the particular cell,

wherein the updated set of cell classifications includes the changed cell classification for the particular cell.

8. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , further comprising:

detecting that each cell in another subset of cells in the digital pathology image has a cell classification that is inconsistent with a region in which the cell is depicted as being located; and

automatically changing the cell classification of each cell in the other subset.

9. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , further comprising:

generating one or more metrics corresponding to a predicted diagnosis, prognosis or treatment response using the set of cell classifications; and

outputting the one or more metrics.

10. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein the GUI is configured such that a region in the segmented image is depicted using a color that is representative of the type of region.

11. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein, for each stain of the set of stains, a target of the stain is a nuclear target.

12. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein, for each stain of the set of stains, a target of the stain is a cell-membrane target.

13. A system comprising:

one or more data processors; and

a non-transitory computer readable storage medium containing instructions which, when executed on the one or more data processors, cause the one or more data processors to perform a set of operations including:

accessing a digital pathology image that depicts a tissue slice stained with multiple stains, each of the multiple stains staining for a corresponding biomarker of a set of biomarkers, wherein the multiple stains include at least three stains;

generating, using a first machine-learning model, a segmented image that identifies at least:

a predicted diseased region in the digital pathology image; and

a background region in the digital pathology image, wherein the background region indicates that signals that are present within the background region are not to be assessed when analyzing signals of the set of biomarkers;

detecting depictions of a set of cells in the digital pathology image;

generating, using a second machine-learning model, a cell classification for each cell of the set of cells, wherein the cell classification is selected from a set of potential classifications that indicate which, if any, of the set of biomarkers are expressed in the cell;

detecting that a subset of the set of cells in the digital pathology image are within the background region; and

in response to detecting that the subset of the set of cells in the digital pathology image are within the background region, updating the cell classification for each cell of at least some cells in the subset to be a background classification that was not included in the set of potential classifications.

14. The system of claim 13 , wherein the set of operations further comprises:

generating a training data set that includes the digital pathology and that includes an updated set of cell classifications that includes the updated cell classification for each cell in the subset;

training a third machine-learning model using the training data set.

15. The system of claim 13 , wherein the set of operations further comprises:

configuring a graphical user interface (GUI) to present an interactive screen that:

displays at least part of the segmented image;

displays, for each of at least some of the set of cells, a representation of the cell that indicates both the cell classification and a location of the depiction of the cell in the digital pathology image; and

provides a tool configured to receive input from a user that indicates an instruction to change one or more of the cell classifications of the at least some of the set of cells;

detecting an interaction with the tool that represents an instruction to change the cell classification of a particular cell of the at least some of the set of cells; and

updating, in response to the detected interaction, the changed cell classification for the particular cell,

wherein the updated set of cell classifications includes the changed cell classification for the particular cell.

16. The system of claim 13 , wherein the set of operations further comprises:

detecting that each cell in another subset of cells in the digital pathology image has a cell classification that is inconsistent with a region in which the cell is depicted as being located; and

automatically changing the cell classification of each cell in the other subset.

17. The system of claim 13 , wherein the set of operations further comprises:

generating one or more metrics corresponding to a predicted diagnosis, prognosis or treatment response using the set of cell classifications; and

outputting the one or more metrics.

18. The system of claim 13 , wherein the GUI is configured such that a region in the segmented image is depicted using a color that is representative of the type of region.

19. A computer-program product tangibly embodied in a non-transitory machine-readable storage medium, including instructions configured to cause one or more data processors to perform a set of operations comprising:

accessing a digital pathology image that depicts a tissue slice stained with multiple stains, each of the multiple stains staining for a corresponding biomarker of a set of biomarkers, wherein the multiple stains include at least three stains;

generating, using a first machine-learning model, a segmented image that identifies at least:

a predicted diseased region in the digital pathology image; and

a background region in the digital pathology image, wherein the background region indicates that signals that are present within the background region are not to be assessed when analyzing signals of the set of biomarkers;

detecting depictions of a set of cells in the digital pathology image;

generating, using a second machine-learning model, a cell classification for each cell of the set of cells, wherein the cell classification is selected from a set of potential classifications that indicate which, if any, of the set of biomarkers are expressed in the cell;

detecting that a subset of the set of cells in the digital pathology image are within the background region; and

in response to detecting that the subset of the set of cells in the digital pathology image are within the background region, updating the cell classification for each cell of at least some cells in the subset to be a background classification that was not included in the set of potential classifications.

Assignments (1)
ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR'S INTEREST Recorded Jun 20, 2023
From: BA, QINLE; IZADY YAZDANABADI, MOHAMMADHASSAN; MARTIN, JIM F.; MUKHERJEE, SATARUPA; NIE, YAO; WANG, XIANGXUE
To: VENTANA MEDICAL SYSTEMS, INC.
Reel/Frame 064002/0286 →
Continuity (3)
Continuation In Part PCTUS2023015939 · Mar 22, 2023
Provisional Application 63269833 · Mar 23, 2022
Related Publication 20230307132A1 · Sep 28, 2023
References Cited (40)
US 10650520B1 · Beck · 2020 [cited by examiner]
US 20210295528A1 · Fuchs · 2021 [cited by examiner]
CN 111417958A · 2020 [cited by examiner]
Aresta, G. et al., “iW-Net: an automatic and minimalistic interactive lung nodule segmentation deep network”, arXiv:1811.12789v1, Nov. 30, 2018. [cited by applicant]
Cho S. et al., “DeepScribble: Interactive Pathology Image Segmentation Using Deep Neural Networks with Scribbles”, 2021 IEEE 18th International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI) Apr. 13-16, 2021, Nice, France. [cited by applicant]
International Search Report and Written Opinion for PCT Application No. PCT/US2023/015939, dated Jul. 10, 2023. [cited by applicant]
Sofiiuk, K. et al., “f-BRS: Rethinking Backpropagating Refinement for Interactive Segmentation”, 2020 IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR). [cited by applicant]
Wang, G. et al., “Interactive Medical Image Segmentation using Deep Learning with Image-specific Fine-tuning”, arXiv: 1710.0403v1, Oct. 11, 2017. [cited by applicant]
Weiss, N. et al., “Towards Interactive Breast Tumor Classification Using Transfer Learning”, 2015 18th International Conference, Austin, Texas. [cited by applicant]
“Halo”, Image Analysis Platform, Available Online at: https://indicalab.com/halo/, Accessed from Internet on Mar. 24, 2023, 17 pages. [cited by applicant]
“Pathology Informatics Summit”, Digital pathology Place, Mar. 9-12, 2022, pp. 1-5. [cited by applicant]
Aubreville et al., “Mitosis DOmain Generalization Challenge”, 10.5281/zenodo.4573977, 2021. [cited by applicant]
Ba et al., “Generalizable Deep-Learning-based Interactive Segmentation in Digital-pathology Analysis”, PI Summit, 2022, 2 pages. [cited by applicant]
Boykov et al., “Interactive Graph Cuts for Optimal Boundary & Region Segmentation of Objects in N-D Images”, Proceedings of International Conference on Computer Vision, vol. 1, Jul. 2001, pp. 105-112. [cited by applicant]
Candemir et al., “Lung Segmentation in Chest Radiographs Using Anatomical Atlases With Nonrigid Registration”, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, vol. 33, No. 2, Feb. 2014, pp. 577-590. [cited by applicant]
Carse et al., “Active Learning for Patch-Based Digital Pathology Using Convolutional Neural Networks to Reduce Annotation Costs”, European Congress on Digital Pathology, Jul. 2019, 11 pages. [cited by applicant]
Dasgupta , “Two Faces of Active Learning”, Theoretical computer science, vol. 412, No. 9, Apr. 2011, pp. 1767-1781. [cited by applicant]
Grady , “Random Walks for Image Segmentation”, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, vol. 28, No. 11, Nov. 2006, pp. 1768-1783. [cited by applicant]
Gulshan et al., “Geodesic Star Convexity for Interactive Image Segmentation”, IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, Jun. 2010, pp. 3129-3136. [cited by applicant]
Hariharan et al., “Semantic Contours from Inverse Detectors”, Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision, Nov. 2011, pp. 991-998. [cited by applicant]
Jaeger et al., “Automatic Tuberculosis Screening Using Chest Radiographs”, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, vol. 33, No. 2, Feb. 2014, pp. 233-245. [cited by applicant]
Li et al., “Interactive Image Segmentation With Latent Diversity”, IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, Jun. 2018, pp. 577-585. [cited by applicant]
Long et al., “Learning Transferable Features with Deep Adaptation Networks”, International Conference on Machine Learning, vol. 37, May 27, 2015, 9 pages. [cited by applicant]
Mahadevan et al., “Iteratively Trained Interactive Segmentation”, British Machine Vision Conference, Sep. 3-6, 2018, pp. 1-12. [cited by applicant]
Miao et al., “Quick Annotator: An Open-Source Digital Pathology Based Rapid Image Annotation Tool”, The Journal of Pathology: Clinical Research, vol. 7, No. 6, Nov. 2021, pp. 1-14. [cited by applicant]
Moreno-Torres et al., “A Unifying View on Dataset Shift in Classification”, Pattern recognition, vol. 45, No. 1, Jan. 2012, pp. 521-530. [cited by applicant]
Pan et al., “Unsupervised Intra-Domain Adaptation for Semantic Segmentation Through Self-Supervision”, In Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, Jul. 2020, pp. 3764-3773. [cited by applicant]
Rother et al., “GrabCut Interactive Foreground Extraction Using Iterated Graph Cuts”, ACM Transactions on Graphics, vol. 23, No. 3, Aug. 2004, pp. 309-314. [cited by applicant]
Ruifrok et al., “Quantification of Histochemical Staining by Color Deconvolution”, Analytical and Quantitative Cytology and Histology, vol. 23, No. 4, Aug. 2001, pp. 291-299. [cited by applicant]
Sener et al., “Active Learning for Convolutional Neural Networks: A Core-Set Approach”, In: International Conference on Learning Representations, Jun. 2018, pp. 1-13. [cited by applicant]
Tzeng et al., “Adversarial Discriminative Domain Adaptation”, IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, Jul. 2017, pp. 7167-7176. [cited by applicant]
Wang et al., “Deep High-Resolution Representation Learning for Visual Recognition”, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, vol. 43, No. 10, Mar. 13, 2020, pp. 1-23. [cited by applicant]
Wang et al., “Deep High-Resolution Representation Learning for Visual Recognition”, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, vol. 43, No. 10, Apr. 2020, pp. 3349-3364. [cited by applicant]
Xu et al., “Deep Interactive Object Selection”, IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, Mar. 13, 2016, pp. 1-9. [cited by applicant]
Yosinski et al., “How Transferable Are Features in Deep Neural Networks?”, Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, vol. 27, Nov. 6, 2014, 14 pages. [cited by applicant]
Yuan et al., “Object-Contextual Representations for Semantic Segmentation”, European Conference on Computer Vision, Aug. 2020, pp. 1-18. [cited by applicant]
Yuan et al., “Segmentation Transformer: Object-Contextual Representations for Semantic Segmentation”, European Conference on Computer Vision, Apr. 2021, 21 pages. [cited by applicant]
Sofiiuk, K., et al., “F-BRS: Rethinking Backpropagating Refinement for Interactive Segmentation,” [cited by applicant]
Sofiiuk, K., et al., “Reviving Iterative Training with Mask Guidance for Interactive Segmentation.” [cited by applicant]
Mukherjee, S., et al., “A Deep Learning based Accelerated Method for Generation of Groundtruth Annotations for Chromogenic Duplex Assays,” Medical Imaging with Deep Learning (MIDL), 2023, 4 pages. [cited by applicant]