Techniques are provided for determining a cell count within a whole slide pathology image. The image is segmented using a global threshold value to define a tissue area. A plurality of patches comprising the tissue area are selected. Stain intensity vectors are determined within the plurality of patches to generate a stain intensity image. The stain intensity image is iteratively segmented to generate a cell mask using a local threshold value that is and gradually reduced after each iteration. A chamfer distance transform is applied to the cell mask to generate a distance map. Cell seeds are determined on the distance map. Cell segments are determined using a watershed transformation, and a whole cell count is calculated for the plurality of patches based on the cell segments. A client device may be configured for real-time cell counting based on the whole cell count.