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Automatic Quantification of the Extracellular Matrix Degradation Produced by Tumor Cells

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Innovation in Medicine and Healthcare 2016 (InMed 2016)

Part of the book series: Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies ((SIST,volume 60))

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Abstract

Understanding the mechanisms of invasion of cancer cells into surrounding tissues is of primary importance for limiting tumor progression. The degradation of the extracellular matrix (ECM) and the consequent invasion of the surrounding tissue by tumor cells represent the first stage in the development and dissemination of metastasis. The quantification of such a degradation is thus an important parameter to evaluate the metastatic potential of tumor cells. Assessment of degradation is usually performed in in vitro assays, in which tumor cells are cultured on a gelatin (or other matrix)-coated dishes and the degraded gelatin areas under the tumor cells are visualized and quantified by fluorescent labelling. In this paper, we present an automatic method to quantify the ECM degradation through the feature analysis of the digital images, obtained from the in vitro assays and showing the tumor cells and the degraded gelatin areas. Differently from the existing methods of image analysis supporting biologists, our method does not require any interaction with the user providing quickly corrected and unbiased measures. Comparative results with a method frequently used by biologists, has been performed.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for High Performance Computing and Networking, National Research Council of Italy (ICAR-CNR), Naples, Italy

    Nadia Brancati, Giuseppe De Pietro & Maria Frucci

  2. Institute of Protein Biochemistry, National Research Council of Italy (IBP-CNR), Naples, Italy

    Chiara Amoruso, Daniela Corda & Alessia Varone

Authors
  1. Nadia Brancati
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  2. Giuseppe De Pietro
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  3. Maria Frucci
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  4. Chiara Amoruso
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  5. Daniela Corda
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  6. Alessia Varone
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nadia Brancati .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Info Science & Eg, Ritsumeikan University College of Info Science & Eg, Kusatsu, Shiga, Japan

    Yen-Wei Chen

  2. Dept of Media Technology, Ritsumeikan University Dept of Media Technology, Kusatsu, Shiga, Japan

    Satoshi Tanaka

  3. KES International , Shoreham-by-sea, United Kingdom

    Robert J. Howlett

  4. University of Canberra, Canberra, Australia

    Lakhmi C. Jain

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© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Brancati, N., De Pietro, G., Frucci, M., Amoruso, C., Corda, D., Varone, A. (2016). Automatic Quantification of the Extracellular Matrix Degradation Produced by Tumor Cells. In: Chen, YW., Tanaka, S., Howlett, R., Jain, L. (eds) Innovation in Medicine and Healthcare 2016. InMed 2016. Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies, vol 60. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39687-3_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39687-3_14

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-39686-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-39687-3

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

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