1. Quantitative Image Analysis of Epithelial and Stromal Area in Histological Sections of Colorectal Cancer: An Emerging Diagnostic Tool
- Author
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Radu Rogojanu, Ursula Thiem, I. Mesteri, C. Smochina, Andreas Heindl, Isabella Ellinger, Theresia Thalhammer, Alexander K. Seewald, Walter Jäger, and Giovanna Bises
- Subjects
Adult ,Male ,Pathology ,medicine.medical_specialty ,Stromal cell ,Article Subject ,Colorectal cancer ,lcsh:Medicine ,Connective tissue ,Sensitivity and Specificity ,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology ,Pattern Recognition, Automated ,Metastasis ,Text mining ,Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted ,medicine ,Humans ,Aged ,Microscopy ,General Immunology and Microbiology ,biology ,business.industry ,lcsh:R ,Liver Neoplasms ,Reproducibility of Results ,Cancer ,Epithelial Cells ,General Medicine ,Middle Aged ,medicine.disease ,medicine.anatomical_structure ,Connective Tissue ,Tumor progression ,biology.protein ,Female ,Antibody ,Colorectal Neoplasms ,business ,Algorithms ,Research Article - Abstract
In colorectal cancer (CRC), an increase in the stromal (S) area with the reduction of the epithelial (E) parts has been suggested as an indication of tumor progression. Therefore, an automated image method capable of discriminating E and S areas would allow an improved diagnosis. Immunofluorescence staining was performed on paraffin-embedded sections from colorectal tumors (16 samples from patients with liver metastasis and 18 without). Noncancerous tumor adjacent mucosa (n=5) and normal mucosa (n=4) were taken as controls. Epithelial cells were identified by an anti-keratin 8 (K8) antibody. Large tissue areas (5–63 mm2/slide) including tumor center, tumor front, and adjacent mucosa were scanned using an automated microscopy system (TissueFAXS). With our newly developed algorithms, we showed that there is more K8-immunoreactive E in the tumor center than in tumor adjacent and normal mucosa. Comparing patients with and without metastasis, the E/S ratio decreased by 20% in the tumor center and by 40% at tumor front in metastatic samples. The reduction of E might be due to a more aggressive phenotype in metastasis patients. The novel software allowed a detailed morphometric analysis of cancer tissue compartments as tools for objective quantitative measurements, reduced analysis time, and increased reproducibility of the data.
- Published
- 2015