HEp 2 staining pattern recognition at cell and specimen levels: datasets, algorithms and results

The Indirect Immunofluorescence (IIF) protocol applied on Human Epithelial type 2 (HEp-2) cells is the current gold standard for the Antinuclear Antibody (ANA) test. The formulation of the diagnosis requires the visual analysis of a patient’s specimen under a fluorescence microscope in order to recognize the cells’ staining pattern which could be related to a connective tissue disease. This analysis is time consuming and error prone, thus in the recent past we have witnessed a growing interest in the pattern recognition scientific community directed at the development of methods for supporting this complex task. The main driver of the interest towards this problem is represented by the series of international benchmarking initiatives organized in the last four years that allowed dozens of research groups to propose innovative methodologies for HEp-2 cells’ staining pattern classification. In this paper we update the state …