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Proliferation assessment in breast carcinomas using digital image analysis based on virtual Ki67/cytokeratin double staining

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Abstract

Manual estimation of Ki67 Proliferation Index (PI) in breast carcinoma classification is labor intensive and prone to intra- and interobserver variation. Standard Digital Image Analysis (DIA) has limitations due to issues with tumor cell identification. Recently, a computer algorithm, DIA based on Virtual Double Staining (VDS), segmenting Ki67-positive and -negative tumor cells using digitally fused parallel cytokeratin (CK) and Ki67-stained slides has been introduced. In this study, we compare VDS with manual stereological counting of Ki67-positive and -negative cells and examine the impact of the physical distance of the parallel slides on the alignment of slides. TMAs, containing 140 cores of consecutively obtained breast carcinomas, were stained for CK and Ki67 using optimized staining protocols. By means of stereological principles, Ki67-positive and -negative cell profiles were counted in sampled areas and used for the estimation of PIs of the whole tissue core. The VDS principle was applied to both the same sampled areas and the whole tissue core. Additionally, five neighboring slides were stained for CK in order to examine the alignment algorithm. Correlation between manual counting and VDS in both sampled areas and whole core was almost perfect (correlation coefficients above 0.97). Bland–Altman plots did not reveal any skewness in any data ranges. There was a good agreement in alignment (>85 %) in neighboring slides, whereas agreement decreased in non-neighboring slides. VDS gave similar results compared with manual counting using stereological principles. Introduction of this method in clinical and research practice may improve accuracy and reproducibility of Ki67 PI.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Pathology, Aalborg University Hospital, Ladegaardsgade 3, 9000, Aalborg, Denmark

    Rasmus Røge, Søren Nielsen & Mogens Vyberg

  2. Department of Clinical Medicine, Aalborg University, 9000, Aalborg, Denmark

    Rasmus Røge & Mogens Vyberg

  3. Institute of Pathology, Aarhus University Hospital, Noerrebrogade 44, 8000, Aarhus C, Denmark

    Rikke Riber-Hansen

Authors
  1. Rasmus Røge
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  2. Rikke Riber-Hansen
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  3. Søren Nielsen
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  4. Mogens Vyberg
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Correspondence to Rasmus Røge.

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Ethical standards

All experiments in this article were performed in accordance to Danish law.

Conflicts of interest

RR and MV have collaborated with Visiopharm in the development of the software. MV is member of the Visiopharm Scientific Advisory Board. The remaining authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Røge, R., Riber-Hansen, R., Nielsen, S. et al. Proliferation assessment in breast carcinomas using digital image analysis based on virtual Ki67/cytokeratin double staining. Breast Cancer Res Treat 158, 11–19 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10549-016-3852-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10549-016-3852-6

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