Sequential convolutional neural networks for nuclei segmentation

A method for segmenting cell nuclei in medical images, the method comprising:

• by a first trained machine learning algorithm processing a medical image to provide center locations of cell nuclei depicted in the medical image;
• by a second trained machine learning algorithm processing each of a plurality of patches of the medical image, each of the patches corresponding to one of the plurality of center locations, the processing by the second trained machine learning algorithm outputting a nuclear boundary corresponding to the corresponding one of the center locations.

Apparatus for segmenting cell nuclei in medical images, the apparatus comprising:

• a first trained machine learning algorithm operative to process a medical image to provide center locations of cell nuclei depicted in the medical image;
• a second trained machine learning algorithm operative to process each of a plurality of patches of the medical image, each of the patches corresponding to one of the plurality of center locations, the processing by the second trained machine learning algorithm outputting a nuclear boundary corresponding to the corresponding one of the center locations.