The problemCervical cytology slides lack the relatively stable spatial structure and contextual information found in histopathology, while abnormal cells are sparse, morphological differences are subtle, and whole-slide images are extremely large. The core challenge in automated TCT screening is to identify diagnostically meaningful abnormal cells within vast numbers of normal cells and complex backgrounds, then form a reliable slide-level screening result.
My contributionI lead the visual screening pipeline from TCT WSI processing and cell detection to abnormal-cell evidence aggregation, slide-level prediction, and evaluation, including experimental dataset construction, model training, result analysis, and screening-threshold selection.
Project outcomesIn internal validation, the model achieved approximately 50% specificity at a high-recall operating point of 95% sensitivity, enabling effective triage of many negative slides while prioritizing the detection of abnormal cases. In a screening setting with an abnormal-case prevalence of about 10%, this corresponds to an estimated 45% of all slides entering a low-risk queue, shifting manual review from exhaustive screening toward prioritized review of high-risk cases and key cells.
Potential Screening UtilityThe project establishes a complete analytical pathway from ultra-high-resolution WSI to cell-level evidence and then to slide-level screening results. This workflow may reduce repetitive review of negative slides in large-scale cervical cytology screening and direct limited human review capacity toward high-risk cases and diagnostically important regions.