Using optimal transport theory to optimize a deep convolutional neural network microscopic cell counting method

Medical image processing has become increasingly important in recent years, particularly in the field of microscopic cell imaging. However, accurately counting the number of cells in an image can be a challenging task due to the significant variations in cell size and shape. To tackle this problem, many existing methods rely on deep learning techniques, such as convolutional neural networks (CNNs), to count cells in an image or use regression counting methods to learn the similarities between an input image and a predicted cell image density map. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to monitor the cell counting process by optimizing the loss function using the optimal transport method, a rigorous measure to calculate the difference between the predicted count map and the dot annotation map generated by the CNN. We evaluated our algorithm on three publicly available cell count benchmarks: the synthetic fluorescence microscopy (VGG) dataset, the modified bone marrow (MBM) dataset, and the human subcutaneous adipose tissue (ADI) dataset. Our method outperforms other state-of-the-art methods, achieving a mean absolute error (MAE) of 2.3, 4.8, and 13.1 on the VGG, MBM, and ADI datasets, respectively, with smaller standard deviations. By using the optimal transport method, our approach provides a more accurate and reliable cell counting method for medical image processing. Graphical abstract