Colorectal Cancer Detection Based on Deep Learning

The initial point in the diagnostic workup of solid tumors remains manual, with the assessment of hematoxylin and eosin (H&E)-stained tissue sections by microscopy. This is a labor-intensive step that requires attention to detail. In addition, diagnoses are influenced by an individual pathologist's knowledge and experience and may not always be reproducible between pathologists.

We introduce a deep learning-based method in colorectal cancer detection and segmentation from digitized H&E-stained histology slides.

In this study, we demonstrate that this neural network approach produces median accuracy of 99.9% for normal slides and 94.8% for cancer slides compared to pathologist-based diagnosis on H&E-stained slides digitized from clinical samples.

Given that our approach has very high accuracy on normal slides, use of neural network algorithms may provide a screening approach to save pathologist time in identifying tumor regions. We suggest that this new method may be a powerful assistant for colorectal cancer diagnostics.