# Histogram of Cell Types: Deep Learning for Automated Bone Marrow Cytology

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.02293 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.02293/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 18 of its 52 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 5 Jul 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 18 of 18)

- [Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.01497/) (2015)
- [ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.0575/) (2014)
- [Densely Connected Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.06993/) (2016)
- [SGDR: Stochastic Gradient Descent with Warm Restarts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.03983/) (2016)
- [You Only Look Once: Unified, Real-Time Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02640/) (2015)
- [YOLOv3: An Incremental Improvement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.02767/) (2018)
- [Rich feature hierarchies for accurate object detection and semantic segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1311.2524/) (2013)
- [YOLOv4: Optimal Speed and Accuracy of Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.10934/) (2020)
- [Path Aggregation Network for Instance Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.01534/) (2018)
- [Spatial Pyramid Pooling in Deep Convolutional Networks for Visual Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1406.4729/) (2014)
- [Distance-IoU Loss: Faster and Better Learning for Bounding Box Regression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.08287/) (2019)
- [CSPNet: A New Backbone that can Enhance Learning Capability of CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.11929/) (2019)
- [DropBlock: A regularization method for convolutional networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.12890/) (2018)
- [Gland Segmentation in Colon Histology Images: The GlaS Challenge Contest](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.00275/) (2016)
- [A Robust Real-Time Automatic License Plate Recognition Based on the YOLO Detector](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.09567/) (2018)
- [Development and Validation of a Deep Learning Algorithm for Improving Gleason Scoring of Prostate Cancer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.06497/) (2018)
- [Deep-Learning for Classification of Colorectal Polyps on Whole-Slide Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.01550/) (2017)
- [Bone marrow cells detection: A technique for the microscopic image analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.02058/) (2018)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Deep Learning for Computational Cytology: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.05126/) (2022)
- [AttriGen: Automated Multi-Attribute Annotation for Blood Cell Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.26185/) (2025)
- [A Hierarchical Ensemble Inference Pipeline for Robust White Blood Cell Classification Under Domain Shifts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.23271/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Bone marrow cytology is required to make a hematological diagnosis, influencing critical clinical decision points in hematology. However, bone marrow cytology is tedious, limited to experienced reference centers and associated with high inter-observer variability. This may lead to a delayed or incorrect diagnosis, leaving an unmet need for innovative supporting technologies. We have developed the first ever end-to-end deep learning-based technology for automated bone marrow cytology. Starting with a bone marrow aspirate digital whole slide image, our technology rapidly and automatically detects suitable regions for cytology, and subsequently identifies and classifies all bone marrow cells in each region. This collective cytomorphological information is captured in a novel representation called Histogram of Cell Types (HCT) quantifying bone marrow cell class probability distribution and acting as a cytological "patient fingerprint". The approach achieves high accuracy in region detection (0.97 accuracy and 0.99 ROC AUC), and cell detection and cell classification (0.75 mAP, 0.78 F1-score, Log-average miss rate of 0.31). HCT has potential to revolutionize hematopathology diagnostic workflows, leading to more cost-effective, accurate diagnosis and opening the door to precision medicine.