title: Correction of stain variations in nuclear refractive index of clinical histology specimens.
abstract: For any technique to be adopted into a clinical setting, it is imperative that it seamlessly integrates with well-established clinical diagnostic workflow. We recently developed an optical microscopy technique-spatial-domain low-coherence quantitative phase microscopy (SL-QPM) that can extract the refractive index of the cell nucleus from the standard histology specimens on glass slides prepared via standard clinical protocols. This technique has shown great potential in detecting cancer with a better sensitivity than conventional pathology. A major hurdle in the clinical translation of this technique is the intrinsic variation among staining agents used in histology specimens, which limits the accuracy of refractive index measurements of clinical samples. In this paper, we present a simple and easily generalizable method to remove the effect of variations in staining levels on nuclear refractive index obtained with SL-QPM. We illustrate the efficacy of our correction method by applying it to variously stained histology samples from animal model and clinical specimens.
authors: University of Pittsburgh, Department of Medicine, Biomedical Optical Imaging Laboratory (BOIL), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15232, USA. shf28@pitt.edu
authors: Shikhar
authors: S
authors: Uttam
authors: Rajan K
authors: RK
authors: Bista
authors: Douglas J
authors: DJ
authors: Hartman
authors: Randall E
authors: RE
authors: Brand
authors: Yang
authors: Y
authors: Liu
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000737:chemistry; D002467:Cell Nucleus / Q000737:chemistry*; D004396:Coloring Agents / Q000737:chemistry*; D004801:Eosine Yellowish-(YS) / Q000737:chemistry; D005260:Female; D006416:Hematoxylin / Q000737:chemistry; D006651:Histocytochemistry; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D007368:Interferometry; D016014:Linear Models; D051379:Mice; D008853:Microscopy / Q000379:methods*; D011230:Precancerous Conditions / Q000737:chemistry; D012031:Refractometry / Q000379:methods*; D013057:Spectrum Analysis
chemical_list: D004396:Coloring Agents; D004801:Eosine Yellowish-(YS); D006416:Hematoxylin