Automated Iterative Label Transfer Improves Segmentation of Noisy Cells in Adaptive Optics Retinal Images

High quality data labeling is essential for improving the accuracy of deep learning applications in medical imaging. However, noisy images are not only under-represented in training datasets, but also, labeling of noisy data is low quality. Unfortunately, noisy images with poor quality labels are exacerbated by traditional data augmentation strategies. Real world images contain noise and can lead to unexpected drops in algorithm performance. In this paper, we present a non-traditional, purposeful data augmentation method to specifically transfer high quality automated labels into noisy image regions for incorporation into the training dataset. The overall approach is based on the use of paired images of the same cells in which variable image noise results in cell segmentation failures. Iteratively updating the cell segmentation model with accurate labels of noisy image areas resulted in an improvement in Dice coefficient from 77% to 86%. This was achieved by adding only 3.4% more cells to the training dataset, showing that local label transfer through graph matching is an effective augmentation strategy to improve segmentation.