Scherr, T. | bioRxiv Science

bioRxiv2021

On Improving an Already Competitive Segmentation Algorithm for the Cell Tracking Challenge - Lessons Learned

The virtually error-free segmentation and tracking of densely packed cells and cell nuclei is still a challenging task. Especially in low-resolution and low signal-to-noise-ratio microscopy images erroneously merged and missing cells are common segmentation errors making the subsequent cell tracking even more difficult. In 2020, we successfully participated as team KIT-Sch-GE (1) in the 5th edition of the ISBI Cell Tracking Challenge. With our deep learning-based distance map regression segmentation and our graph-based cell tracking, we achieved multiple top 3 rankings on the diverse data sets. In this manuscript, we show how our approach can be further improved by using another optimizer and by fine-tuning training data augmentation parameters, learning rate schedules, and the training data representation. The fine-tuned segmentation in combination with an improved tracking enabled to further improve our performance in the 6th edition of the Cell Tracking Challenge 2021 as team KIT-Sch-GE (2).

bioinformatics↗

bioRxiv2021

A graph-based cell tracking algorithm with few manually tunable parameters and automated segmentation error correction

Automatic cell segmentation and tracking enables to gain quantitative insights into the processes driving cell migration. To investigate new data with minimal manual effort, cell tracking algorithms should be easy to apply and reduce manual curation time by providing automatic correction of segmentation errors. Current cell tracking algorithms, however, are either easy to apply to new data sets but lack automatic segmentation error correction, or have a vast set of parameters that needs either manual tuning or annotated data for parameter tuning. In this work, we propose a tracking algorithm with only few manually tunable parameters and automatic segmentation error correction. Moreover, no training data is needed. We compare the performance of our approach to three well-performing tracking algorithms from the Cell Tracking Challenge on data sets with simulated, degraded segmentation - including false negatives, over- and under-segmentation errors. Our tracking algorithm can correct false negatives, over- and under-segmentation errors as well as a mixture of the aforementioned segmentation errors. On data sets with under-segmentation errors or a mixture of segmentation errors our approach performs best. Moreover, without requiring additional manual tuning, our approach ranks several times in the top 3 on the 6th edition of the Cell Tracking Challenge.

bioinformatics↗