Convolutional Neural Networks for Recognition of Lymphoblast Cell Images

This paper presents the recognition for WHO classification of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) subtypes. The two ALL subtypes considered are T-lymphoblastic leukaemia (pre-T) and B-lymphoblastic leukaemia (pre-B). They exhibit various characteristics which make it difficult to distinguish between subtypes from their mature cells, lymphocytes. In a common approach, handcrafted features must be well designed for this complex domain-specific problem. With deep learning approach, handcrafted feature engineering can be eliminated because a deep learning method can automate this task through the multilayer architecture of a convolutional neural network (CNN). In this work, we implement a CNN classifier to explore the feasibility of deep learning approach to identify lymphocytes and ALL subtypes, and this approach is benchmarked against a dominant approach of support vector machines (SVMs) applying handcrafted feature engineering. Additionally, two traditional machine learning classifiers, multilayer perceptron (MLP), and random forest are also applied for the comparison. The experiments show that our CNN classifier delivers better performance to identify normal lymphocytes and pre-B cells. This shows a great potential for image classification with no requirement of multiple preprocessing steps from feature engineering.