Megakaryocytic features useful for the diagnosis of myeloproliferative disorders can be obtained by a novel unsupervised software analysis

An unsupervised method for megakaryocyte detection and analysis is proposed, in order to validate supplementary tools which can be of help in supporting the pathologist in the classification of Philadelphia negative chronic myeloproliferative disorders with thrombocytosis. The experiment was conducted on high power magnification photomicrographs taken from hematoxylin-and-eosin 3 µm thick sections of formalin fixed, paraffin embedded bone marrow biopsies from patients with reactive thrombocytosis or chronic myeloproliferative disorders. Each megakaryocyte has been isolated in the photos through an image segmentation process, mainly based on mathematical morphology and wavelet analysis. A se…