Automated quantification of steatosis: agreement with stereological point counting
Automated quantification of steatosis: agreement with stereological point counting
复制标题
脂肪变性的自动定量：与体视点计数一致
作者：
A. Homeyer;P. Nasr;Christiane Engel;S. Kechagias;P. Lundberg;M. Ekstedt;H. Kost;Nick Weiss;T. Palmer;H. Hahn;D. Treanor;C. Lundström
背景在临床实践和研究中，脂肪变性是常规的组织学评估。自动图像分析可以减少量化脂肪变性的工作。由于重现性是必不可少的实际使用，我们已经评估了不同的分析方法，他们的协议与体视学点计数（SPC）由hepatologist.MethodsThe评价是基于一个大的和有代表性的数据集970从人类患者的组织学图像与不同的肝脏疾病。三个评估的方法是建立在以前公布的方法。一种方法采用了一种新的方法，以提高鲁棒性的图像variability.ResultsThe新方法表现出最强的协议与专家。在20倍分辨率下，它再现了脂肪变性面积分数，对于无或轻度脂肪变性，平均绝对误差为0.011，对于中度或重度脂肪变性，平均绝对误差为0.036。在10倍分辨率下，它比20倍分辨率下的所有其他方法更准确，速度是其他方法的两倍。当与SPC进行了两个额外的人类观察员相比，其误差大大低于一个，只有略高于其他observer.ConclusionsThe结果表明，新的方法可以是一个合适的自动化替代SPC。在进一步的改进可以验证之前，有必要彻底评估人类观察者之间SPC的变异性。
BackgroundSteatosis is routinely assessed histologically in clinical practice and research. Automated image analysis can reduce the effort of quantifying steatosis. Since reproducibility is essential for practical use, we have evaluated different analysis methods in terms of their agreement with stereological point counting (SPC) performed by a hepatologist.MethodsThe evaluation was based on a large and representative data set of 970 histological images from human patients with different liver diseases. Three of the evaluated methods were built on previously published approaches. One method incorporated a new approach to improve the robustness to image variability.ResultsThe new method showed the strongest agreement with the expert. At 20× resolution, it reproduced steatosis area fractions with a mean absolute error of 0.011 for absent or mild steatosis and 0.036 for moderate or severe steatosis. At 10× resolution, it was more accurate than and twice as fast as all other methods at 20× resolution. When compared with SPC performed by two additional human observers, its error was substantially lower than one and only slightly above the other observer.ConclusionsThe results suggest that the new method can be a suitable automated replacement for SPC. Before further improvements can be verified, it is necessary to thoroughly assess the variability of SPC between human observers.