Characterization of Nuclear Pleomorphism and Tubules in Histopathological Images of Breast Cancer

Breast cancer (BC) diagnosis is made by a pathologist who analyzes a portion of the breast tissue under the microscope and performs a histological evaluation. This evaluation aims to determine the grade of cellular differentiation and the aggressiveness of the tumor by the Nottingham Grade Classific...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) Switzerland), 2022-07, Vol.22 (15), p.5649
Main Authors: Peregrina-Barreto, Hayde, Ramirez-Guatemala, Valeria Y., Lopez-Armas, Gabriela C., Cruz-Ramos, Jose A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accuracy
automatic classification
Breast cancer
breast cancer diagnosis
Diagnosis
Differentiation (biology)
digital image processing
Digital imaging
Evaluation
histological differentiation grade
Histopathology
Image processing
Medical imaging
Medical prognosis
Methodology
Morphology
Nuclei (cytology)
Software
Watersheds
Wavelet transforms
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Summary:Breast cancer (BC) diagnosis is made by a pathologist who analyzes a portion of the breast tissue under the microscope and performs a histological evaluation. This evaluation aims to determine the grade of cellular differentiation and the aggressiveness of the tumor by the Nottingham Grade Classification System (NGS). Nowadays, digital pathology is an innovative tool for pathologists in diagnosis and acquiring new learning. However, a recurring problem in health services is the excessive workload in all medical services. For this reason, it is required to develop computational tools that assist histological evaluation. This work proposes a methodology for the quantitative analysis of BC tissue that follows NGS. The proposed methodology is based on digital image processing techniques through which the BC tissue can be characterized automatically. Moreover, the proposed nuclei characterization was helpful for grade differentiation in carcinoma images of the BC tissue reaching an 0.84 accuracy. In addition, a metric was proposed to assess the likelihood of a structure in the tissue corresponding to a tubule by considering spatial and geometrical characteristics between lumina and its surrounding nuclei, reaching an accuracy of 0.83. Tests were performed from different databases and under various magnification and staining contrast conditions, showing that the methodology is reliable for histological breast tissue analysis.
ISSN:1424-8220
1424-8220
DOI:10.3390/s22155649