title: Evaluation of area-based collagen scoring by nonlinear microscopy in chronic hepatitis C-induced liver fibrosis.
abstract: In this paper we analyze a fibrosis scoring method based on measurement of the fibrillar collagen area from second harmonic generation (SHG) microscopy images of unstained histological slices from human liver biopsies. The study is conducted on a cohort of one hundred chronic hepatitis C patients with intermediate to strong Metavir and Ishak stages of liver fibrosis. We highlight a key parameter of our scoring method to discriminate between high and low fibrosis stages. Moreover, according to the intensity histograms of the SHG images and simple mathematical arguments, we show that our area-based method is equivalent to an intensity-based method, despite saturation of the images. Finally we propose an improvement of our scoring method using very simple image processing tools.
authors.affiliation: University of Brest, EA938 Laboratoire de Spectrométrie et Optique Laser, SFR Scinbios, 6 avenue le Gorgeu CS 93837, Brest Cedex 3, 29238, France ; IMNC - UMR8165 Campus d'Orsay, Bât 440, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Sevrain
authors.affiliation: University of Brest, EA938 Laboratoire de Spectrométrie et Optique Laser, SFR Scinbios, 6 avenue le Gorgeu CS 93837, Brest Cedex 3, 29238, France.
authors.forename: Matthieu
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Dubreuil
authors.affiliation: NIHR Nottingham Digestive Diseases Biomedical Research Unit, Nottingham, UK.
authors.forename: Grace Elizabeth
authors.initials: GE
authors.lastname: Dolman
authors.affiliation: Nottingham University Hospitals, Department of Histopathology, UK.
authors.forename: Abed
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Zaitoun
authors.affiliation: NIHR Nottingham Digestive Diseases Biomedical Research Unit, Nottingham, UK ; University of Nottingham, School of Molecular Medical Science, Nottingham, UK.
authors.forename: William
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Irving
authors.affiliation: NIHR Nottingham Digestive Diseases Biomedical Research Unit, Nottingham, UK.
authors.forename: Indra Neil
authors.initials: IN
authors.lastname: Guha
authors.affiliation: University of Rennes 1, UMR CNRS 6251 Institut de Physique de Rennes, 263 avenue du Général Leclerc CS 74205, Rennes Cedex, 35042, France.
authors.forename: Christophe
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Odin
authors.affiliation: University of Brest, EA938 Laboratoire de Spectrométrie et Optique Laser, SFR Scinbios, 6 avenue le Gorgeu CS 93837, Brest Cedex 3, 29238, France.
authors.forename: Yann
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Le Grand
keywords: (110.2960) Image analysis; (170.1610) Clinical applications; (170.3880) Medical and biological imaging; (170.4580) Optical diagnostics for medicine; (180.4315) Nonlinear microscopy