Patent ID: 11915422
Assignee: BOSTONGENE CORPORATION
Field: Computer technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G | IPC G

Claim 29:
30. A method, comprising:
using at least one computer hardware processor to perform:
obtaining at least one multiplexed immunofluorescence (MxIF) image of a same tissue sample, wherein the at least one MxIF image comprises a plurality of channels that are associated with respective markers in a plurality of markers;
obtaining, using a neural network, information indicative of locations of cells in the at least one MxIF image, wherein the neural network is implemented using a U-Net architecture or a region-based convolutional neural network architecture, and wherein the neural network comprises at least one million parameters;
identifying multiple groups of cells in the at least one MxIF image at least in part by:
identifying pixel intensity values for at least some of the cells using the at least one MxIF image and the information indicative of locations of cells; and
grouping the at least some of the cells into the multiple groups at least in part by clustering using a graph neural network different from the neural network, wherein the information indicative of locations of cells includes information indicating cell boundaries of the at least some of the cells, wherein the clustering comprises grouping the at least some of the cells by:
for each particular cell of the at least some of the cells, using the information indicating cell boundaries of at least some of the cells to identify pixels within the particular cell's boundary, and
calculating at least one feature value using the identified pixel intensity values for the pixels identified within the particular cell's boundary; and
determining similarities among the calculated feature values; and

determining at least one characteristic of the tissue sample using the multiple groups, wherein determining the at least one characteristic comprises determining information about cell types in the tissue sample, determining cell masks, and/or determining spatial distribution of the cell types.