Poudel Ananta, Fowler Jonas L, Zielinski Mark C, Kilimnik German, Hara Manami
Department of Medicine, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA.
Sci Rep. 2016 Sep 23;6:34049. doi: 10.1038/srep34049.
The large size of human tissues requires a practical stereological approach to perform a comprehensive analysis of the whole organ. We have developed a method to quantitatively analyze the whole human pancreas, as one of the challenging organs to study, in which endocrine cells form various sizes of islets that are scattered unevenly throughout the exocrine pancreas. Furthermore, the human pancreas possesses intrinsic characteristics of intra-individual variability, i.e. regional differences in endocrine cell/islet distribution, and marked inter-individual heterogeneity regardless of age, sex and disease conditions including obesity and diabetes. The method is built based on large-scale image capture, computer-assisted unbiased image analysis and quantification, and further mathematical analyses, using widely-used software such as Fiji/ImageJ and MATLAB. The present study includes detailed protocols of every procedure as well as all the custom-written computer scripts, which can be modified according to specific experimental plans and specimens of interest.
人体组织的庞大尺寸需要一种实用的体视学方法来对整个器官进行全面分析。我们已经开发出一种方法，用于定量分析整个人类胰腺，胰腺是研究颇具挑战性的器官之一，其中内分泌细胞形成大小各异的胰岛，这些胰岛不均匀地散布于外分泌胰腺中。此外，人类胰腺具有个体内变异性的内在特征，即内分泌细胞/胰岛分布的区域差异，以及无论年龄、性别和疾病状况（包括肥胖症和糖尿病）如何都存在显著的个体间异质性。该方法基于大规模图像采集、计算机辅助无偏图像分析与量化以及进一步的数学分析构建而成，使用了诸如Fiji/ImageJ和MATLAB等广泛使用的软件。本研究包括每个步骤的详细方案以及所有自定义编写的计算机脚本，这些脚本可根据特定的实验计划和感兴趣的标本进行修改。
