# ClinSegNet: Towards Reliable and Enhanced Histopathology Screening

## TL;DR

ClinSegNet is a new framework for histopathology image analysis that improves detection of small lesions and reduces missed diagnoses.

## Contribution

The novel ClinSegNet framework introduces a recall-oriented design with HistoLoss and an uncertainty-driven refinement mechanism for reliable lesion detection.

## Key findings

- ClinSegNet achieved recall scores of 0.8803 and 0.8917 on the NuInsSeg and NuInsSeg-UHS datasets.
- With HITL refinement, recall scores improved to 0.8983 and 0.9053 while maintaining competitive Dice and IoU metrics.
- The framework effectively captures small or complex lesions and leverages limited clinical data through an automated annotation pipeline.

## Abstract

In histopathological image segmentation, existing methods often show low sensitivity to small lesions and indistinct boundaries, leading to missed detections. Since, in clinical diagnosis, the consequences of missed detection are more serious than false alarms, this study proposes ClinSegNet, a recall-oriented and human-centred framework for reliable histopathology screening. ClinSegNet employs a composite optimisation strategy, termed HistoLoss, which balances stability and boundary refinement while prioritising recall. An uncertainty-driven refinement mechanism is further introduced to target high-uncertainty cases with limited fine-tuning cost. In addition, a clinical data processing pipeline was developed, where pixel-level annotations were automatically derived from IHC-to-H&E mapping and combined with public datasets, enabling effective training under limited clinical data conditions. Experiments on the NuInsSeg and NuInsSeg-UHS datasets showed that ClinSegNet achieved recall scores of 0.8803 and 0.8917, further improved to 0.8983 and 0.9053 with HITL refinement, while maintaining competitive Dice and IoU. Comparative and ablation studies confirmed the complementary design of the framework and its advantage in capturing small or complex lesions. In conclusion, ClinSegNet provides a clinically oriented, recall-prioritised framework that enhances lesion coverage, reduces the risk of missed diagnosis, and offers both a methodological basis for future human-in-the-loop systems and a feasible pipeline for leveraging limited clinical data.