Schipper N W, Smeulders A W, de Lange J H, Baak J P
Department of Pathology, Free University, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Hum Pathol. 1989 Nov;20(11):1125-32. doi: 10.1016/0046-8177(89)90233-5.
In endometrial carcinomas, the epithelial area measured by interactive morphometry is an important feature in the classification of tumors of varying histologic grades. This report describes an image analysis technique for the fully automated estimation of the area percentages of epithelium and stroma in tissue sections of the endometrium obtained from hysterectomy specimens. The method is evaluated using endometrial carcinomas with varying degrees of malignancy. From standard paraffin sections stained with pararosanilin Feulgen and naphthol yellow, a blue-yellow image pair was recorded. The blue image was used to determine the total tissue area and the yellow image was used to determine the epithelial area. Image processing of the blue image was comprised of correction for shading, segmentation of the tissue area, and restoration of the segmented image by removing small artefacts and closing small tears in the tissue. Image processing of the yellow image was based on the fact that epithelial nuclei are generally more tightly packed than stromal nuclei and consists of the following steps: correction for shading, gaussian blurring, segmentation of nuclei, and editing the segmented image by removing small objects and closing small spaces between the epithelial nuclei. These image processing steps are compared with those used for quantification of the epithelial area in ovarian tumors. The performance of the method was evaluated using 120 image pairs from 30 endometrial carcinomas of varying histologic grades. The epithelial area percentages, as assessed by digital image processing, strongly correlate to control percentages that were established by interactive morphometry (r = .987).
在子宫内膜癌中，通过交互式形态计量学测量的上皮面积是不同组织学分级肿瘤分类的一个重要特征。本报告描述了一种图像分析技术，用于全自动估计从子宫切除标本获得的子宫内膜组织切片中上皮和间质的面积百分比。使用不同恶性程度的子宫内膜癌对该方法进行评估。从用副蔷薇苯胺福尔根和萘酚黄染色的标准石蜡切片中，记录了一对蓝黄图像。蓝色图像用于确定总组织面积，黄色图像用于确定上皮面积。蓝色图像的图像处理包括阴影校正、组织区域分割以及通过去除小伪像和闭合组织中的小裂缝来恢复分割后的图像。黄色图像的图像处理基于上皮细胞核通常比间质细胞核排列更紧密这一事实，包括以下步骤：阴影校正、高斯模糊、细胞核分割以及通过去除小物体和闭合上皮细胞核之间的小间隙来编辑分割后的图像。将这些图像处理步骤与用于量化卵巢肿瘤上皮面积的步骤进行比较。使用来自30例不同组织学分级的子宫内膜癌的120对图像对评估该方法的性能。通过数字图像处理评估的上皮面积百分比与通过交互式形态计量学确定的对照百分比高度相关（r = 0.987）。
