Comparative Study of Human and Automated Screening for Antinuclear Antibodies by Immunofluorescence on HEp-2 Cells

Background : Several automated systems had been developed in order to reduce inter-observer variability in indirect immunofluorescence (IIF) interpretation. We aimed to evaluate the performance of a processing system in antinuclear antibodies (ANA) screening on HEp-2 cells. Patients and Methods : This study included 64 ANA-positive sera and 107 ANA-negative sera that underwent IIF on two commercial kits of HEp-2 cells (BioSystems® and Euroimmun®). IIF results were compared with a novel automated interpretation system, the “ Cyclopus CADImmuno®” (CAD). Results : All ANA-positive sera images were recognized as positive by CAD (sensitivity = 100%), while 17 (15.9%) of the ANA-negative sera ima…