Abstract
Circulating genetically abnormal cells (CACs) serve as crucial biomarkers for lung cancer diagnosis. Detecting CACs holds great value for early diagnosis and screening of lung cancer. To aid the identification of CACs, we have incorporated deep learning algorithms into our CACs detection system, specifically developing algorithms for cell segmentation and signal point detection. However, it is noteworthy that deep learning algorithms require extensive data labeling. Consequently, this study introduces a semi-supervised learning algorithm for CACs detection. For the cell segmentation task, a combination of self-training and Mean Teacher method was adopted in the semi-supervised training cell segmentation task. Furthermore, an Adaptive Mean Teacher approach was developed based on the Mean Teacher to enhance the effectiveness of semi-supervised cell segmentation. Regarding the signal point detection task, an end-to-end semi-supervised signal point detection algorithm was developed using the Adaptive Mean Teacher as the paradigm, and a Domain-Knowledge Pseudo Label was developed to improve the quality of pseudo-labeling and further enhance signal point detection. By incorporating semi-supervised training in both sub-tasks, the reliance on labeled data is reduced, thereby improving the performance of CACs detection. Our proposed semi-supervised method has achieved good results in cell segmentation tasks, signal point detection tasks, and the final CACs detection task. In the final CACs detection task, with 2%, 5%, and 10% of labeled data, our proposed semi-supervised method achieved 27.225%, 23.818%, and 4.513%, respectively. Experimental results demonstrated that the proposed method is effective.