Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Schulich School of Engineering, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada.
J Digit Imaging. 2010 Jun;23(3):323-31. doi: 10.1007/s10278-009-9188-6. Epub 2009 Feb 19.
Some renal diseases cause changes in the structure of the glomerular basement membranes (GBM). Measurement of the thickness of the GBM can be performed on transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images of renal biopsy samples. Increased thickness of the GBM is observed in patients with diabetic nephropathy. Abnormally thin GBMs are associated with hematuria. We propose image processing methods for the detection and measurement of the GBM. The methods include edge detection, morphological image processing, active contour modeling, skeletonization, and statistical analysis of the width of the GBM. In the present pilot study, the methods were tested with 34 TEM images of six patients. The estimated mean and standard deviation of the GBM width for a patient with normal GBM were 348 +/- 135 nm; those for a patient with thin GBMs due to hematuria were 227 +/- 94 nm; and those for a patient with diabetic nephropathy were 1,152 +/- 411 nm. Comparison with manual measurements by an experienced renal pathologist indicated low error in the range of 36 +/- 11 nm.
一些肾脏疾病会导致肾小球基底膜（GBM）结构发生变化。可以通过对肾活检样本的透射电子显微镜（TEM）图像进行 GBM 厚度测量。糖尿病肾病患者的 GBM 厚度增加。异常薄的 GBM 与血尿有关。我们提出了用于检测和测量 GBM 的图像处理方法。这些方法包括边缘检测、形态图像处理、主动轮廓建模、骨骼化以及 GBM 宽度的统计分析。在本初步研究中，我们用 6 名患者的 34 张 TEM 图像对这些方法进行了测试。正常 GBM 患者的 GBM 宽度估计平均值和标准差为 348 ± 135nm；血尿导致 GBM 变薄的患者的 GBM 宽度平均值和标准差为 227 ± 94nm；糖尿病肾病患者的 GBM 宽度平均值和标准差为 1152 ± 411nm。与经验丰富的肾脏病理学家的手动测量相比，误差在 36 ± 11nm 范围内。
