FIG. 5 illustrates a flowchart of an exemplary method 500 for encoding image features of a biological specimen image. Method 500 may be executed, for example, by various modules of image analysis system 100 discussed above. Method 500 may be implemented, for example, in the form of executable instructions stored on at least one non-transitory machine-readable storage medium (e.g., memory 116) and executed by at least one processor or processor core (e.g., processor 117). Method 500 may also be implemented in the form of electronic circuitry (e.g., hardware), or in the form of some combination of electronic circuitry and instructions executable by a processor. It will be appreciated by persons skilled in the art based on the following description of method 500 that some blocks of method 500 may be executed substantially concurrently or in a different order than shown in FIG. 5; that method 500 may include more or less blocks than are shown in FIG. 5; and that some blocks of method 500 may, at certain times, be ongoing and/or may repeat.