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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Digital Pathology Enables Automated and Quantitative Assessment of Inflammatory Activity in Patients with Chronic Liver Disease

David Martí-aguadoMatías Fernández-patónClara Alfaro-cervelloClaudia Mestre-alagardaMónica BauzaAna Gallen-perisVíctor MerinoSalvador BenllochJudith Pérez-rojasAntonio FerrándezVíctor PugliaMarta Gimeno-torresVictoria AguileraCristina MontonDesamparados Escudero-garcíaÁNgel Alberich-bayarriMiguel A. SerraLuis Martí-bonmatí

subject

Liver CirrhosisMalenonalcoholic fatty liver diseaseMiddle AgedFibrosisMicrobiologyBiochemistryArticleQR1-502digital pathology; inflammation; nonalcoholic fatty liver disease; chronic hepatitisLiverNon-alcoholic Fatty Liver DiseaseinflammationHumanschronic hepatitisdigital pathologyMolecular Biology

description

Traditional histological evaluation for grading liver disease severity is based on subjective and semi-quantitative scores. We examined the relationship between digital pathology analysis and corresponding scoring systems for the assessment of hepatic necroinflammatory activity. A prospective, multicenter study including 156 patients with chronic liver disease (74% nonalcoholic fatty liver disease-NAFLD, 26% chronic hepatitis-CH etiologies) was performed. Inflammation was graded according to the Nonalcoholic Steatohepatitis (NASH) Clinical Research Network system and METAVIR score. Whole-slide digital image analysis based on quantitative (I-score: inflammation ratio) and morphometric (C-score: proportionate area of staining intensities clusters) measurements were independently performed. Our data show that I-scores and C-scores increase with inflammation grades (p ρ = 0.85–0.88), but only moderate for NAFLD (ρ = 0.5–0.53). I-score (p = 0.008) and C-score (p = 0.002) were higher for CH than NAFLD. Our MATLAB algorithm performed better than QuPath software for the diagnosis of low-moderate inflammation (p p < 0.001). In conclusion, quantitative and morphometric metrics of inflammatory burden obtained by digital pathology correlate well with pathologists’ scores, showing a higher accuracy for the evaluation of CH than NAFLD.

https://doi.org/10.3390/biom11121808