PAPNET for analysis of proliferating (MIB-1 positive) cell populations in cervical smears.

In diagnostic tumor pathology, immunohistochemical detection of proliferating cell populations is increasingly used. With the event of microwave-antigen retrieval it has become possible to detect proliferating cells in cervical smears staining positive for MiB-1. We report that with the PAPNET system, using neural network computing, it is possible to collect from the smears the images with epithelial fragments containing positive nuclei. We used this system for quantification of staining results. Cases with carcinoma in situ contained many epithelial fragments having a large number of positive-staining nuclei and with labelling indices of 60 +/- 16. Dysplasias were often completely devoid of cells with positive nuclei. In addition, we could not detect differences between progressive and regressive dysplasias. Automatic prescreening of immunostained smears using PAPNET is useful when it is desired to quantify staining results.