QuPath algorithm accurately identifies MLH1 deficient inflammatory bowel disease-associated colorectal cancers in a tissue microarray

Ross Porter, Shahida Din, Peter Bankhead, Anca Oniscu, Mark J Arends

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract / Description of output

Current methods for analysing immunohistochemistry are labour-intensive and often 13 confounded by inter-observer variability. Analysis is time consuming when identifying small 14 clinically-important cohorts within larger samples. This study trained QuPath, an open-source 15 image analysis program, to accurately identify MLH1-deficient inflammatory bowel disease-16 associated colorectal cancers (IBD-CRC) from a tissue microarray containing normal colon and IBD-17 CRC. The tissue microarray (n=162 cores) was imunostained for MLH1, digitalised, and imported 18 into QuPath. A small sample (n=14) was used to train QuPath to detect positive versus no MLH1 19 and tissue histology (normal epithelium, tumour, immune infiltrates, stroma). This algorithm was 20 applied to the tissue microarray and correctly identified tissue histology and MLH1 expression in 21 the majority of valid cases (73/99, 73.74%), incorrectly identified MLH1 status in one case (1.01%), 22 and flagged 25/99 (25.25%) cases for manual review. Qualitative review found five reasons for 23 flagged cores: small quantity of tissue, diverse/atypical morphology, excessive 24 inflammatory/immune infiltrations, normal mucosa, or weak/patchy immunostaining. Of classified 25 cores (n=74), QuPath was 100% (95% CI 80.49, 100) sensitive and 98.25% (95% CI 90.61, 99.96) specific 26 for identifying MLH1-deficient IBD-CRC, 𝜿=0.963 (95%CI 0.890, 1.036) (p
Original languageEnglish
JournalDiagnostics
Volume13
Issue number11
Early online date28 May 2023
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 28 May 2023

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

  • QUPath
  • machine learning
  • biomarket
  • MLH1
  • Colorectal cancer
  • inflammatory bowel disease
  • mismatch repair
  • immunohistochemistry
  • histology

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