A Workflow for the Performance of the Differential Ovarian Follicle Count Using Deep Neuronal Networks

In order to automate the counting of ovarian follicles required in multigeneration reproductive studies performed in the rat according to Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development guidelines 443 and 416, the application of deep neural networks was tested. The manual evaluation of the differential ovarian follicle count is a tedious and time-consuming task that requires highly trained personnel. In this regard, deep learning outputs provide overlay pictures for a more detailed documentation, together with an increased reproducibility of the counts. To facilitate the planned good laboratory practice (GLP) validation a workflow was set up using MLFlow to make all steps from generating of scans, training of the neural network, uploading of study images to the neural network, generation and storage of the results in a compliant manner controllable and reproducible. PyTorch was used as main framework to build the Faster region-based convolutional neural network for the training. We compared the performances of different depths of ResNet models with specific regard to the sensitivity, specificity, accuracy of the models. In this paper, we describe all steps from data labeling, training of networks, and the performance metrics chosen to evaluate different network architectures. We also make recommendation on steps, which should be taken into consideration when GLP validation is aimed for.