Cutting-Edge Approaches to Cell Segmentation in Imaging Mass Cytometry: A Detailed Review

Imaging mass cytometry (IMC) is the current trend in tissue section imaging, aimed at identifying many biomarkers. This imaging technique can capture more than 40 biomarkers in a single section, making it pioneering in providing detailed insights into the protein expression profiles within the imaged tissues. IMC is widely and extensively used in biological cancer studies, tumor microenvironment analysis, and other diseases such as diabetes. In this study, we aim to present the general concept of IMC and methods for handling its images, starting from an overview of key preprocessing steps and culminating in a review of various approaches to cell segmentation