UDCT: Unsupervised data to content transformation with histogram-matching cycle-consistent generative adversarial networks

The segmentation of images is a common task in a broad range of research fields. To tackle increasingly complex images, artificial intelligence (AI) based approaches have emerged to overcome the shortcomings of traditional feature detection methods. Owing to the fact that most AI research is made publicly accessible and programming the required algorithms is now possible in many popular languages, the use of such approaches is becoming widespread. However, these methods often require data labeled by the researcher to provide a training target for the algorithms to converge to the desired result. This labeling is a limiting factor in many cases and can become prohibitively time consuming. Inspired by Cycle-consistent Generative Adversarial Networks’ (cycleGAN) ability to perform style transfer, we outline a method whereby a computer generated set of images is used to segment the true images. We benchmark our unsupervised approach against a state-of-the-art supervised cell-counting network on the VGG Cells dataset and show that it is not only competitive but can also precisely locate individual cells. We demonstrate the power of this method by segmenting bright-field images of cell cultures, a live-dead assay of C.Elegans and X-ray-computed tomography of metallic nanowire meshes.