Methods and apparatus for measuring tissue section thickness
US5546323A · kind A · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Oct 12, 1995 |
| Grant date | Aug 13, 1996 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Oct 12, 2015 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06T2207/30024
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
An apparatus and method for measuring the thickness of a tissue section with an automated image analysis system, preferably using polyploid nuclear DNA content, for subsequent use in analyzing cell objects of a specimen cell sample for the diagnosis and treatment of actual or suspected cancer or monitoring any variation in the nominal thickness in a microtome setting. An image of a measurement material, such as a rat liver tissue section, having known cell object attributes is first digitized and the morphological attributes, including area and DNA mass of the cell objects, are automatically measured from the digitized image. The measured attributes are compared to ranges of attribute values which are preestablished to select particular cell objects. After the selection of the cell objects, the operator may review the automatically selected cell objects and accept or change the measured cell object attribute values. In a preferred embodiment, each selected cell object is assigned to one of three classes corresponding to diploid, tetraploid and octoploid cell morphology and the measured DNA mass of the identified cell object fragments in the rat liver tissue section sample may be co…
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