Enabling Histopathological Annotations on Immunofluorescent Images through Virtualization of Hematoxylin and Eosin

CONTEXT: Medical diagnosis and clinical decisions rely heavily on the histopathological evaluation of tissue samples, especially in oncology. Historically, classical histopathology has been the gold standard for tissue evaluation and assessment by pathologists. The most widely and commonly used dyes in histopathology are hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) as most malignancies diagnosis is largely based on this protocol. H&E staining has been used for more than a century to identify tissue characteristics and structures morphologies that are needed for tumor diagnosis. In many cases, as tissue is scarce in clinical studies, fluorescence imaging is necessary to allow staining of the same specimen with multiple biomarkers simultaneously. Since fluorescence imaging is a relatively new technology in the pathology landscape, histopathologists are not used to or trained in annotating or interpreting these images. AIMS, SETTINGS AND DESIGN: To allow pathologists to annotate these images without the need for additional training, we designed an algorithm for the conversion of fluorescence images to brightfield H&E images. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: In this algorithm, we use fluorescent nuclei staining to reproduce the hematoxylin information and natural tissue autofluorescence to reproduce the eosin information avoiding the necessity to specifically stain the proteins or intracellular structures with an additional fluorescence stain. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS USED: Our method is based on optimizing a transform function from fluorescence to H&E images using least mean square optimization. RESULTS: It results in high quality virtual H&E digital images that can easily and efficiently be analyzed by pathologists. We validated our results with pathologists by making them annotate tumor in real and virtual H&E whole slide images and we obtained promising results. CONCLUSIONS: Hence, we provide a solution that enables pathologists to assess tissue and annotate specific structures based on multiplexed fluorescence images.