Nature Biotechnology23, 469 - 474 (2005)
Published online: 27 March 2005; | doi:10.1038/nbt1080
Infrared spectroscopic imaging for histopathologic recognition
Daniel C Fernandez1, 3, 4, Rohit Bhargava1, 4, Stephen M Hewitt2
& Ira W Levin1
1
Laboratory of Chemical Physics, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892-0520, USA.
2
Tissue Array Research Program, Laboratory of Pathology, Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892-4605, USA.
3
Present address: Mount Sinai School of Medicine, One Gustave L. Levy Place, New York, New York 10029, USA.
The process of histopathology, comprising tissue staining and morphological pattern recognition, has remained largely unchanged for over 140 years1. Although it is integral to clinical and research activities, histopathologic recognition remains a time-consuming, subjective process to which only limited statistical confidence can be assigned because of inherent operator variability2,
3. Although immunohistochemical approaches allow limited molecular detection, significant challenges remain in using them for quantitative, automated pathology. Vibrational spectroscopic approaches, by contrast, directly provide nonperturbing molecular descriptors4, but a practical spectroscopic protocol for histopathology is lacking. Here we couple high-throughput Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopic imaging5 of tissue microarrays6 with statistical pattern recognition of spectra indicative of endogenous molecular composition and demonstrate histopathologic characterization of prostatic tissue. This automated histologic segmentation is applied to routine archival tissue samples, incorporates well-defined tests of statistical significance7 and eliminates any requirement for dyes or molecular probes. Finally, we differentiate benign from malignant prostatic epithelium by spectroscopic analyses.
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