Classification of Inflammatory Bowel Disease from Formalin-Fixed, Paraffin-Embedded Tissue Biopsies Via Imaging Mass Spectrometry.

PURPOSE Discrimination between ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn's disease (CD) by histologic features alone can be challenging and often leads to inaccurate initial diagnoses in inflammatory bowel disease patients. This is mostly due to an overlap of clinical and histologic features. However, exact diagnosis is not only important for patient treatment but also has a socioeconomic impact. It is therefore important to develop and improve diagnostic tools complementing traditional histomorphological approaches. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN In this retrospective proof-of-concept study we explore the utilization of MALDI imaging in combination with multi-variate data analysis methods to classify FFPE colon biopsies from UC (87 biopsies, 14 patients), CD (71 biopsies, 14 patients), and normal colonic (21 biopsies, 14 patients) tissues. RESULTS The proposed method results in an overall balanced accuracy of 85.7% on patient and of 80.4% on sample level, thus demonstrating that the assessment of IBD from FFPE tissue specimens via MALDI imaging is feasible. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE Our results emphasize the high potential of this method to distinguish IBD subtypes in FFPE tissue sections, which is a prerequisite for further investigations in retrospective multicenter studies, as well as for a future implementation into clinical routine. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.