Department of Medical Physics, University of Patras, Rio, Patras, Greece.
Medical Image and Signal Processing Laboratory, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Technological Educational Institute of Athens, Athens, Greece.
J Healthc Eng. 2018 Jul 5;2018:6358189. doi: 10.1155/2018/6358189. eCollection 2018.
Cervical dysplasia is a precancerous condition, and if left untreated, it may lead to cervical cancer, which is the second most common cancer in women. The purpose of this study was to investigate differences in nuclear properties of the H&E-stained biopsy material between low CIN and high CIN cases and associate those properties with the CIN grade.
The clinical material comprised hematoxylin and eosin- (H&E-) stained biopsy specimens from lesions of 44 patients diagnosed with cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN). Four or five nonoverlapping microscopy images were digitized from each patient's H&E specimens, from regions indicated by the expert physician. Sixty-three textural and morphological nuclear features were generated for each patient's images. The Wilcoxon statistical test and the point biserial correlation were used to estimate each feature's discriminatory power between low CIN and high CIN cases and its correlation with the advancing CIN grade, respectively.
Statistical analysis showed 19 features that quantify nuclear shape, size, and texture and sustain statistically significant differences between low CIN and high CIN cases. These findings revealed that nuclei in high CIN cases, as compared to nuclei in low CIN cases, have more irregular shape, are larger in size, are coarser in texture, contain higher edges, have higher local contrast, are more inhomogeneous, and comprise structures of different intensities.
A systematic statistical analysis of nucleus features, quantified from the H&E-stained biopsy material, showed that there are significant differences in the shape, size, and texture of nuclei between low CIN and high CIN cases.
宫颈发育不良是一种癌前病变，如果不加以治疗，可能会导致宫颈癌，宫颈癌是女性第二大常见癌症。本研究旨在探讨 H&E 染色活检标本中低级别 CIN 和高级别 CIN 病例之间细胞核性质的差异，并将这些性质与 CIN 分级相关联。
临床资料包括 44 例经诊断为宫颈上皮内瘤变（CIN）的患者的苏木精和伊红（H&E）染色活检标本。从每位患者的 H&E 标本中由专家医生指示的病变区域数字化了 4 或 5 个不重叠的显微镜图像。为每位患者的图像生成了 63 个纹理和形态核特征。Wilcoxon 统计检验和点二项式相关用于分别估计每个特征在低级别 CIN 和高级别 CIN 病例之间的区分能力及其与进展性 CIN 分级的相关性。
统计分析显示了 19 个特征，这些特征定量了细胞核的形状、大小和纹理，并在低级别 CIN 和高级别 CIN 病例之间维持统计学上的显著差异。这些发现表明，与低级别 CIN 病例相比，高级别 CIN 病例的细胞核形状更不规则，大小更大，纹理更粗糙，边缘更高，局部对比度更高，不均匀性更高，并且包含不同强度的结构。
对 H&E 染色活检材料中的核特征进行系统的统计分析表明，低级别 CIN 和高级别 CIN 病例之间细胞核的形状、大小和纹理存在显著差异。
