Digital analysis of distant and cancer-associated mammary adipocytes.
Breast
; 54: 179-186, 2020 Dec.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-33120083
ABSTRACT
Adipocytes and cancer-associated adipocytes (CAAs) are poorly investigated cells in the tumor microenvironment. Different image analysis software exist for identifying and measuring these cells using scanned hematoxylin and eosin (H&E)-stained slides. It is however unclear which one is the most appropriate for breast cancer (BC) samples. Here, we compared three software (AdipoCount, Adiposoft, and HALO®). HALO® outperformed the other methods with regard to adipocyte identification, (> 96% sensitivity and specificity). All software performed equally good with regard to area and diameter measurement (concordance correlation coefficients > 0.97 and > 0.96, respectively). We then analyzed a series of 10 BCE samples (n = 51 H&E slides) with HALO®. Distant adipocytes were defined >2 mm away from cancer cells or fibrotic region, whereas CAAs as the first three lines of adipocytes close to the invasive front. Intra-mammary heterogeneity was limited, implying that measuring a single region of â¼500 adipocytes provides a reliable estimation of the distribution of their size features. CAAs had smaller areas (median fold-change 2.62) and diameters (median fold-change 1.64) as compared to distant adipocytes in the same breast (both p = 0.002). The size of CAAs and distant adipocytes was associated with the body mass index (BMI) of the patient (area rho = 0.89, p = 0.001; rho = 0.71, p = 0.027, diameter rho = 0.87 p = 0.002; rho = 0.65 p = 0.049, respectively). To conclude, we demonstrate that quantifying adipocytes in BC sections is feasible by digital pathology using H&E sections, setting the basis for a standardized analysis of mammary adiposity in larger series of patients.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
/
Breast
/
Breast Neoplasms
/
Carcinoma, Ductal, Breast
/
Adipocytes
Type of study:
Risk_factors_studies
Limits:
Female
/
Humans
/
Middle aged
Language:
En
Journal:
Breast
Journal subject:
ENDOCRINOLOGIA
/
NEOPLASIAS
Year:
2020
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Italia