Accurate and Robust Alignment of Variable-stained Histologic Images Using a General-purpose Greedy Diffeomorphic Registration Tool

TL;DR

This paper introduces a practical two-step diffeomorphic registration method for accurately aligning variable-stained histologic images, enhancing the analysis of sequential tissue slides for better disease understanding.

Contribution

The paper presents a general-purpose, robust registration tool combining affine and detailed deformation steps specifically designed for variable-stained histology images.

Findings

Effective alignment of sequential histology slides achieved

Improved spatial analysis of tissue growth patterns

Robustness to staining variability demonstrated

Abstract

Variously stained histology slices are routinely used by pathologists to assess extracted tissue samples from various anatomical sites and determine the presence or extent of a disease. Evaluation of sequential slides is expected to enable a better understanding of the spatial arrangement and growth patterns of cells and vessels. In this paper we present a practical two-step approach based on diffeomorphic registration to align digitized sequential histopathology stained slides to each other, starting with an initial affine step followed by the estimation of a detailed deformation field.