Quantitative morphometric analysis of individual resected prostatic tissue specimens, using immunohistochemical staining and colour-image analysis.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: To develop a method for obtaining morphometric measurements representative of individual chips from transurethral resection of the prostate (TURP). MATERIALS AND METHODS: In all, 232 sections were cut in pairs from 25 TURP chips, collected from four patients undergoing TURP for benign prostatic hyperplasia. Individual tissue chips were processed, embedded in paraffin wax and pairs of neighbouring sections cut from the specimens at intervals of 300 microm throughout the thickness of the specimen. Of each pair, the epithelial tissue (ET) of one and the smooth muscle (SM) of the other section were stained immunohistochemically with anti-prostate-specific antigen and anti-SM myosin, respectively. Proportions of ET and SM within the sections were measured with colour-image analysis and calculated within the TURP chips using all pairs of sections cut from the specimen, and the first pair of sections only. The differences between the sets of results were analysed using descriptive statistics. RESULTS: From each TURP chip, 3-7 pairs of sections were cut; for both ET and SM within each chip the differences between the results calculated using data from all pairs of sections and the first pair alone were small, as were the distributions of these differences within each prostate. CONCLUSIONS: Morphometric measurements from one section from a processed TURP chip, as opposed to serial sections, can be used to reliably assess the morphology of tissue within that specimen. This permits a considerable saving of resources when undertaking morphometric image analysis of resected prostatic tissue specimens.