La Jeffrey, Raghunathan Krishnan, Silvester Jocelyn A, Thiagarajah Jay R
Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition, Boston Children's Hospital; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States of America.
Harvard Celiac Research Program, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States of America.
J Pathol Inform. 2024 Sep 13;15:100397. doi: 10.1016/j.jpi.2024.100397. eCollection 2024 Dec.
The tissue morphology of the intestinal surface is architecturally complex with finger-like projections called villi, and glandular structures called crypts. The ratio of villus height-to-crypt depth ratio (Vh:Cd) is used to quantitatively assess disease severity and response to therapy for intestinal enteropathies, such as celiac disease and is currently quantified manually. Given the time required, manual Vh:Cd measurements have largely been limited to clinical trials and are not used widely in clinical practice. We developed ViCE (Villus Crypt Evaluator), a user-friendly software that automatically quantifies histological parameters in standard hematoxylin and eosin-stained intestinal biopsies.
ViCE is based on mathematical morphology operations and is scale and staining agnostic. It evaluates tissue orientation, identifies geometrical structure, and outputs key tissue measurements.
The output measurements of Vh:Cd are concordant with manual quantifications across multiple datasets.
The underlying mathematical morphological approach for ViCE is robust, and reproducible and easily adaptable for measurement of morphological features in other tissues.
肠道表面的组织形态在结构上很复杂，有指状突起即绒毛，以及腺状结构即隐窝。绒毛高度与隐窝深度之比（Vh:Cd）用于定量评估肠道疾病（如乳糜泻）的疾病严重程度和对治疗的反应，目前是通过手动进行量化。考虑到所需时间，手动Vh:Cd测量主要限于临床试验，在临床实践中未广泛使用。我们开发了ViCE（绒毛隐窝评估器），这是一款用户友好的软件，可自动对标准苏木精和伊红染色的肠道活检组织中的组织学参数进行量化。
ViCE基于数学形态学运算，与尺度和染色无关。它评估组织方向，识别几何结构，并输出关键的组织测量值。
多个数据集中Vh:Cd的输出测量值与手动量化结果一致。
ViCE的基础数学形态学方法稳健、可重复，且易于适用于测量其他组织的形态特征。
