Abstract
The volume of digital image (DI) storage continues to be an important problem in computer-assisted pathology. DI compression enables the size of files to be reduced but with the disadvantage of loss of quality. Previous results indicated that the efficiency of computer-assisted quantification of immunohistochemically stained cell nuclei may be significantly reduced when compressed DIs are used. This study attempts to show, with respect to immunohistochemically stained nuclei, which morphometric parameters may be altered by the different levels of JPEG compression, and the implications of these alterations for automated nuclear counts, and further, develops a method for correcting this discrepancy in the nuclear count. For this purpose, 47 DIs from different tissues were captured in uncompressed TIFF format and converted to 1:3, 1:23 and 1:46 compression JPEG images. Sixty-five positive objects were selected from these images, and six morphological parameters were measured and compared for each object in TIFF images and those of the different compression levels using a set of previously developed and tested macros. Roundness proved to be the only morphological parameter that was significantly affected by image compression. Factors to correct the discrepancy in the roundness estimate were derived from linear regression models for each compression level, thereby eliminating the statistically significant differences between measurements in the equivalent images. These correction factors were incorporated in the automated macros, where they reduced the nuclear quantification differences arising from image compression. Our results demonstrate that it is possible to carry out unbiased automated immunohistochemical nuclear quantification in compressed DIs with a methodology that could be easily incorporated in different systems of digital image analysis.
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Acknowledgments
We thank María del Mar Barbera, Bárbara Tomás, Vanesa Gestí, Ainhoa Montserrat, Ana Suñé, Verònica Echevarría and Marc Iniesta for their skillful technical assistance, and Anna Carot, Montse Sebastià and Rosa Cabrera for their excellent secretarial work. Grants numbers and sources of support: This work was supported by grants FIS 04/1440, 04/1467 and 05/1527 from the Ministerio de Sanidad y Consumo, Spain and by a grant from the Fundación Mutua Madrileña (FMM Dr. Bosch 2008).
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López, C., Jaén Martinez, J., Lejeune, M. et al. Roundness variation in JPEG images affects the automated process of nuclear immunohistochemical quantification: correction with a linear regression model. Histochem Cell Biol 132, 469–477 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00418-009-0626-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00418-009-0626-9