Classifying Prostate Cancer Malignancy by Quantitative Histomorphometry

Purpose: Prostate cancer is routinely graded according to the Gleason grading scheme. This scheme is predominantly based on the textural appearance of aberrant glandular structures. Gleason grade is difficult to standardize and often leads to discussion due to interrater and intrarater disagreement. Thus, we investigated whether digital image based automated quantitative histomorphometry could be used to achieve a more standardized, reproducible classification outcome.Materials and Methods: In a proof of principle study we developed a method to evaluate digitized histological images of single prostate cancer regions in hematoxylin and eosin stained sections. Preprocessed color images were subjected to color deconvolution, followed by the binarization of obtained hematoxylin related image channels. Highlighted neoplastic epithelial gland related objects were morphometrically assessed by a classifier based on 2 calculated quantitative and objective geometric measures, that is inverse solidity and inverse co...