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Supremacy of modern morphometry in typing renal oncocytoma and malignant look-alikes

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Abstract

In the era of tumour type-specific therapies, the correct typing of renal tumours is of prime importance. As immunotyping and genotyping approaches are laborious and fall short of standardization, we used whole-scale computer-assisted morphometry instead. Three different types of renal tumours with different prognoses and therapies, notoriously prone to mistyping, were analysed . The sample of 335 tumours included clear cell renal cell carcinoma, chromophobe renal cell carcinoma and renal oncocytoma. The sample was analysed using H&E stains of tissue microarrrays in combination with an image-scanning software. Nuclear and cytoplasmic features were registered with the aid of computer-assisted morphometry. Features included shape, texture, colour and colour intensity for different cell compartments, e.g. nuclei and cytoplasm. The software passed several training steps for final validation. Using morphometry, we were able to classify the three renal tumour types correctly, with a 100 % specificity compared to the WHO typing. Nuclear features dominated the typing of chromophobe renal cell carcinoma, whereas cytoplasmic features were the leading classificators for renal oncocytoma. The grading of clear cell renal cell carcinoma attained a specificity of 80 %. In conclusion, modern morphometry may serve as a tool for typing renal epithelial tumours and additionally draws the attention to future nuclear research in chromophobe renal cell carcinoma.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Claire Delbridge for proofreading the manuscript and Martin Mollenhauer for formatting figures and tables. The authors AF and AW gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (SFB 824 TP Z02).

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None declared.

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    Authors and Affiliations

    1. Institute of Pathology, Technische Universität München, Trogerstrasse 18, 81675, Munich, Germany

      Franziska Erlmeier & Gregor Weirich

    2. Research Unit Analytical Pathology, Institute of Pathology, Helmholtz Zentrum München, Munich, Germany

      Annette Feuchtinger, Daniela Borgmann & Axel Karl Walch

    3. Institute of Pathology, University of Würzburg and Comprehensive Cancer Center Mainfranken, Würzburg, Germany

      Martina Rudelius

    4. Department of Urology, University Hospital “Klinikum rechts der Isar München” Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany

      Michael Autenrieth

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    1. Franziska Erlmeier
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    Correspondence to Gregor Weirich.

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    Franziska Erlmeier and Annette Feuchtinger have contributed equally to this work.

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    Erlmeier, F., Feuchtinger, A., Borgmann, D. et al. Supremacy of modern morphometry in typing renal oncocytoma and malignant look-alikes. Histochem Cell Biol 144, 147–156 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00418-015-1324-4

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