title: Histological quantitation of brain injury using whole slide imaging: a pilot validation study in mice.
abstract: Quantitative assessment of serial brain sections provides an objective measure of neurological events at cellular and molecular levels but is difficult to implement in experimental neuroscience laboratories because of variation from person-to-person and the time required for analysis. Whole slide imaging (WSI) technology, recently introduced for pathological diagnoses, offers an electronic environment and a variety of computational tools for performing high-throughput histological analysis and managing the associated information. In our study, we applied various algorithms to quantify histologic changes associated with brain injury and compared the results to manual assessment. WSI showed a high degree of concordance with manual quantitation by Pearson correlation and strong agreement using Bland-Altman plots in: (i) cortical necrosis in cresyl-violet-stained brain sections of mice after focal cerebral ischemia; (ii) intracerebral hemorrhage in ischemic mouse brains for automated annotation of the small regions, rather than whole hemisphere of the tissue sections; (iii) Iba1-immunoreactive cell density in the adjacent and remote brain regions of mice subject to controlled cortical impact (CCI); and (iv) neuronal degeneration by silver staining after CCI. These results show that WSI, when appropriately applied and carefully validated, is a highly efficient and unbiased tool to locate and identify neuropathological features, delineate affected regions and histologically quantify these events.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology and Anatomical Sciences, University of Missouri School of Medicine, Columbia, Missouri, United States of America; Center for Translational Neuroscience, University of Missouri School of Medicine, Columbia, Missouri, United States of America; Department of Neurosurgery, Zhujiang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China.
authors.forename: Zhenzhou
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology and Anatomical Sciences, University of Missouri School of Medicine, Columbia, Missouri, United States of America.
authors.forename: Dmitriy
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Shin
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology and Anatomical Sciences, University of Missouri School of Medicine, Columbia, Missouri, United States of America; Center for Translational Neuroscience, University of Missouri School of Medicine, Columbia, Missouri, United States of America; Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, United States of America.
authors.forename: Shanyan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology and Anatomical Sciences, University of Missouri School of Medicine, Columbia, Missouri, United States of America.
authors.forename: Kovalenko
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Mikhail
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology and Anatomical Sciences, University of Missouri School of Medicine, Columbia, Missouri, United States of America; Center for Translational Neuroscience, University of Missouri School of Medicine, Columbia, Missouri, United States of America.
authors.forename: Orr
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Hadass
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology and Anatomical Sciences, University of Missouri School of Medicine, Columbia, Missouri, United States of America; Center for Translational Neuroscience, University of Missouri School of Medicine, Columbia, Missouri, United States of America.
authors.forename: Brittany N
authors.initials: BN
authors.lastname: Tomlison
authors.affiliation: Informatics Institute and Department of Computer Science, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, United States of America.
authors.forename: Dmitry
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Korkin
authors.affiliation: Informatics Institute and Department of Computer Science, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, United States of America.
authors.forename: Chi-Ren
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Shyu
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology and Anatomical Sciences, University of Missouri School of Medicine, Columbia, Missouri, United States of America; Center for Translational Neuroscience, University of Missouri School of Medicine, Columbia, Missouri, United States of America.
authors.forename: Jiankun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Cui
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology and Anatomical Sciences, University of Missouri School of Medicine, Columbia, Missouri, United States of America; Center for Translational Neuroscience, University of Missouri School of Medicine, Columbia, Missouri, United States of America; Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, United States of America.
authors.forename: Douglas C
authors.initials: DC
authors.lastname: Anthony
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology and Anatomical Sciences, University of Missouri School of Medicine, Columbia, Missouri, United States of America; Center for Translational Neuroscience, University of Missouri School of Medicine, Columbia, Missouri, United States of America.
authors.forename: Zezong
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Gu
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D001331:Automation; D001930:Brain Injuries / Q000150:complications / Q000473:pathology*; D002452:Cell Count; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000473:pathology; D002543:Cerebral Hemorrhage / Q000150:complications / Q000473:pathology; D008297:Male; D051379:Mice; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL; D017628:Microglia / Q000473:pathology; D009336:Necrosis; D009410:Nerve Degeneration / Q000150:complications / Q000473:pathology; D059906:Neuroimaging / Q000379:methods*; D010865:Pilot Projects; D016622:Silver Staining