title: Effects of image compression on automatic count of immunohistochemically stained nuclei in digital images.
abstract: This study investigates the effects of digital image compression on automatic quantification of immunohistochemical nuclear markers. We examined 188 images with a previously validated computer-assisted analysis system. A first group was composed of 47 images captured in TIFF format, and other three contained the same images converted from TIFF to JPEG format with 3x, 23x and 46x compression. Counts of TIFF format images were compared with the other three groups. Overall, differences in the count of the images increased with the percentage of compression. Low-complexity images (< or =100 cells/field, without clusters or with small-area clusters) had small differences (<5 cells/field in 95-100% of cases) and high-complexity images showed substantial differences (<35-50 cells/field in 95-100% of cases). Compression does not compromise the accuracy of immunohistochemical nuclear marker counts obtained by computer-assisted analysis systems for digital images with low complexity and could be an efficient method for storing these images.
authors.affiliation: *Correspondence: Joaquín Jaén Martínez, Department of Pathology, Hospital de Tortosa Verge de la Cinta, C/Esplanetes no. 14, 43500-Tortosa, Spain (Email: jjaen.htvc.ics@gencat.net).
authors.forename: Carlos
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: López
authors.forename: Marylène
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lejeune
authors.forename: Patricia
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Escrivà
authors.forename: Ramón
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Bosch
authors.forename: Maria Teresa
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Salvadó
authors.forename: Lluis E
authors.initials: LE
authors.lastname: Pons
authors.forename: Jordi
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Baucells
authors.forename: Xavier
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Cugat
authors.forename: Tomás
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Alvaro
authors.forename: Joaquín
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Jaén