Preprocessing techniques for public H&E histological images: a systematic review

Abstract

The increasing incidence of cancer has spurred research across various fields. The digitization of tissue samples stained with hematoxylin-eosin (H&E) enables the acquisition of histological images, which are used to develop computational systems to support pathologists in cancer diagnosis. However, the limited availability of public images has been a well-documented obstacle to advancing these systems. This work presents a systematic review of published studies on the preprocessing of H&E images, focusing on identifying public databases. Through this review, we mapped the countries of origin of these images, the most common lesions, preprocessing techniques, and evaluation metrics. This study provides valuable insights for future research in Biomedicine and Computer Science.