Nuclear texture analysis: A new prognostic tool in metastatic prostate cancer

Abstract

This report describes the prognostic value of computerized nuclear texture analysis in metastatic prostate cancer. Seventy‐seven patients with histologically verified prostate carcinomas and skeletal metastases were selected from a Scandinavian multicenter study (SPCG‐2). Thirty‐six therapy‐resistant patients experienced objective progression and cancer‐related death within 2 years after orchiectomy. Thirty patients responded well to orchiectomy, i.e., showed objective disease remission and no signs of progression during 3 years of follow‐up. From this data set, 10 randomly chosen therapy‐resistant and 10 randomly chosen therapy‐sensitive carcinomas were used in our previous study to find the optimal combination of features that can discriminate between the two groups (Yogesan et al.: Cytometry 24:268–276, 1996). In addition to these two groups, 11 patients experienced stable disease or disease remission during the first year and a secondary progression during the second or third year of follow‐up, with subsequent cancer‐related death. Traditional clinical prognostic factors such as histopathological grading and serum markers could not discriminate between these groups of patients. Therefore, image analysis techniques based on texture analysis have been utilized in this study of prognosis of prostate cancer. Feulgen‐stained monolayers of nuclei were prepared from paraffin‐embedded material taken from the primary tumor before endocrine ablation. Four different textural features were selected from the training data set to calculate the discriminating function. This function separated the therapy‐sensitive and the therapy‐resistant patients with 87% accuracy in the independent data set. This study demonstrates that it is possible to predict tumor progression and survival for endocrine‐ablated metastatic prostate carcinomas using computerized nuclear texture analysis on light microscopy images from prostate biopsies taken at the time of diagnosis. © 1996 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.

Ultrasound-accelerated formalin fixation of tissue improves morphology, antigen and mRNA preservation

“…Greater amounts of proteins and nucleic acids, with improved integrity, can be extracted from ultrasound-fixed tissues than from conventionally fixed tissues to support general molecular analysis (Figures 8 and 9). Previous reports have shown that morphological nuclear grading on radical prostatectomy specimens 25,26 and the specificity and intensity of ER staining on breast tissues [27][28][29] are sensitive to formalin fixation time. Our results (Figures 3 and 4) clearly show that 5-min ultrasound-facilitated formalin fixation achieved the same degree of formalin fixation as conventional methods lasting 16 h or more.…”

“…As reported previously, shorter fixation caused nuclear artificial changes that simulate a lower nuclear grading. 25,26 Except in one case where 10% of the prostatectomy showed a nuclear appearance of higher grade, grading of ultrasound-fixed tissue was the same as that determined from conventional formalin-fixed and paraffinembedded tissue. This study indicates that nuclear appearance is almost identical following 5-min ultrasound fixation or 72-h conventional formalin fixation.…”

Valproic acid causes dose- and time-dependent changes in nuclear structure in prostate cancer cellsin vitroandin vivo

“…Subsequently, several investigators (23-28) have used nuclear alterations to predict pathologic stage and prognosis for PCa patients. Nuclear morphometric alterations measured by computer-assisted image analysis can detect abnormal DNA content representing large scale chromosomal alterations (i.e.…”

Image processing, diagnostic information extraction and quantitative assessment in pathology

“…The customary mathematical/statistical analytic models either do not allow its use or simply are not suitable to use it. In karyometry most image analytic software packages routinely compute the values of about one hundred different variables [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. Yet, only a few -typically less than eight -are used in a discriminant function.…”