SPMLD: A skin pathological image dataset for non-melanoma with detailed lesion area annotation.

Skin tumors are the most common tumors in humans and the clinical characteristics of three common non-melanoma tumors (IDN, SK, BCC) are similar, resulting in a high misdiagnosis rate. The accurate differential diagnosis of these tumors needs to be judged based on pathological images. However, a shortage of experienced dermatological pathologists leads to bias in the diagnostic accuracy of these skin tumors in China. In this paper, we establish a skin pathological image dataset, SPMLD, for three non-melanoma to achieve automatic and accurate intelligent identification for them. Meanwhile, we propose a lesion-area-based enhanced classification network with the KLS module and an attention module. Specifically, we first collect thousands of H&E-stained tissue sections from patients with clinically and pathologically confirmed IDN, SK, and BCC from a single-center hospital. Then, we scan them to construct a pathological image dataset of these three skin tumors. Furthermore, we mark the complete lesion area of the entire pathology image to better learn the pathologist's diagnosis process. In addition, we applied the proposed network for lesion classification prediction on the SPMLD dataset. Finally, we conduct a series of experiments to demonstrate that this annotation and our network can effectively improve the classification results of various networks. The source dataset and code are available at https://github.com/efss24/SPMLD.git.

Role of hippo pathway and cuproptosis-related genes in immune infiltration and prognosis of skin cutaneous melanoma.

Melanoma is the most lethal type of skin cancer with an increasing incidence. Cuproptosis is the most recently identified copper-dependent form of cell death that relies on mitochondrial respiration. The hippocampal (Hippo) pathway functions as a tumor suppressor by regulating Yes-associated protein/transcriptional coactivator with PDZ-binding motif (YAP/TAZ) activity. However, its role in cuproptosis remains unknown. In addition, the correlation of cuproptosis-related genes and Hippo pathway-related genes with tumor prognosis warrants further investigation. In the present study, we explored the correlation of cuproptosis-related genes and Hippo pathway-related genes with the prognosis of melanoma through analysis of data from a public database and experimental verification. We found eight Hippo pathway-related genes that were downregulated in melanoma and exhibited predictive value for prognosis. There was a significant positive correlation between cuproptosis-related genes and Hippo pathway-related genes in skin cutaneous melanoma. YAP1 expression was positively correlated with ferredoxin 1 (FDX1) expression in the GSE68599 dataset and A2058 cells. Moreover, YAP1 was positively and negatively correlated with M2 macrophages and regulatory T cell infiltration, respectively. In conclusion, the present study demonstrated the prognostic value of Hippo pathway-related genes (particularly YAP1) in melanoma, revealing the correlation between the expression of Hippo pathway-related genes and immune infiltration. Thus, the present findings may provide new clues on the prognostic assessment of patients with melanoma and a new target for the immunotherapy of this disease.

Artificial Intelligence-Aided Recognition of Pathological Characteristics and Subtype Classification of Superficial Perivascular Dermatitis.

Background: Superficial perivascular dermatitis, an important type of inflammatory dermatosis, comprises various skin diseases, which are difficult to distinguish by clinical manifestations and need pathological imaging observation. Coupled with its complex pathological characteristics, the subtype classification depends to a great extent on dermatopathologists. There is an urgent need to develop an efficient approach to recognize the pathological characteristics and classify the subtypes of superficial perivascular dermatitis. Methods: 3,954 pathological images (4 × and 10 ×) of three subtypes-psoriasiform, spongiotic and interface-of superficial perivascular dermatitis were captured from 327 cases diagnosed both clinically and pathologically. The control group comprised 1,337 pathological images of 85 normal skin tissue slides taken from the edge of benign epidermal cysts. First, senior dermatologists and dermatopathologists followed the structure-pattern analysis method to label the pathological characteristics that significantly contribute to classifying different subtypes on 4 × and 10 × images. A cascaded deep learning algorithm framework was then proposed to establish pixel-level pathological characteristics' masks and classify the subtypes by supervised learning. Results: 13 different pathological characteristics were recognized, and the accuracy of subtype classification was 85.24%. In contrast, the accuracy of the subtype classification model without recognition was 71.35%. Conclusion: Our cascaded deep learning model used small samples to deliver efficient recognition of pathological characteristics and subtype classification simultaneously. Moreover, the proposed method could be applied to both microscopic images and digital scanned images.

Study of melanocyte density and epidermal thickness in vulvar lichen sclerosus lesions.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to analyze changes in melanocyte density and epidermal thickness in vulvar lichen sclerosus (VLS). METHODS: Vulvar skin tissues were collected from 15 VLS female patients in Beijing Hospital, classified into early (n = 7) and late VLS (n = 8) groups according to pathological manifestations. Melanocyte density and full epidermal and cell-layer (from the bottom of the stratum corneum to that of the basal layer) thickness were calculated using an image analysis software. The control group was normal vulvar skin tissues from 15 females after plastic surgery. RESULTS: The early VLS (0.170 ± 0.071 µm) and late VLS (0.110 ± 0.035 µm) groups had significantly lower densities of epidermal melanocytes than the control group (0.275 ± 0.036) (F = 36.426, P < 0.001). The cell-layer thickness did not differ between the early VLS (154.603 ± 121.984 µm) and control (176.974 ± 80.296 µm) groups (P = 0.899) but significantly decreased in the late VLS group (83.455 ± 37.129 µm) compared to the control group (P = 0.003). CONCLUSIONS: Melanocyte density decreased in early and late VLS. The full epidermal and cell-layer thickness did not significantly change in early VLS, but the cell-layer thickness decreased in late VLS.

Topical photodynamic therapy with 5-aminolevulinic acid for cervical high-risk HPV infection.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the clinical efficacy of 5-aminolevulinic acid photodynamic therapy (ALA-PDT) for cervical high-risk HPV (HR-HPV) infection. METHODS: In this prospective study, a total of 76 patients with persistent cervical HR-HPV infection were randomly divided into two groups. The treatment group (39 patients) received three treatments of ALA-PDT at two-week intervals. The control group (37 patients) received no treatment. All patients were followed up for 9 months. Hybrid Capture HPV DNA Assay and ThinPrep cytology test (TCT) were performed for both groups. Patients with abnormal TCT results received colposcopic biopsy before treatment and during follow-ups. RESULTS: HR-HPV remission rates were 64.10% (25/39) in the treatment group and 24.32% (9/37) in the control group at 3 month follow-up. Complete remission rates were 76.92% (30/39) and 32.40% (12/37), respectively, in the two groups at 9 month follow-up. There was a statistically significant difference between the two groups (P<0.01). Conversion rates of abnormal TCT results were 81.81% (9/11) in the treatment group and 12.50% (1/8) in the control group at 3 months, and 90.90% (10/11) and 25.00% (2/8), respectively, at 9 months. Five of six patients with CIN I in the treatment group and no patients in the control group achieved complete response at 9 months. There was a statistically significant difference between the two groups (P<0.01). CONCLUSION: Topical ALA-PDT is an effective, safe and well tolerated treatment for cervical HR-HPV infection.