Unsupervised superpixel-based segmentation of histopathological images with consensus clustering

We present a framework for adapting consensus clustering methods with superpixels to segment oropharyngeal cancer images into tissue types (epithelium, stroma and background). The simple linear iterative clustering algorithm is initially used to split-up the image into binary superpixels which are then used as clustering elements. Colour features of the superpixels are extracted and fed into several base clustering approaches with various parameter initializations. Two consensus clustering formulations are then used, the Evidence Accumulation Clustering (EAC) and the voting-based function. They both combine the base clustering outcomes to obtain a single more robust consensus result. Unlike most unsupervised tissue image segmentation approaches that depend on individual clustering methods, the proposed approach allows for a robust detection of tissue compartments. For the voting-based consensus function, we introduce a technique based on image processing to generate a consistent labelling scheme among the base clustering outcomes. Experiments conducted on forty five hand-annotated images of oropharyngeal cancer tissue microarray cores show that the ensemble algorithm generates more accurate and stable results than individual clustering algorithms. The clustering performance of the voting-based consensus function using our re-labelling technique also outperforms the existing EAC.