Cascaded discrimination of normal, abnormal, and confounder classes in histopathology: Gleason grading of prostate cancer

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Automated classification of histopathology involves identification of multiple classes, including benign, cancerous, and confounder categories. The confounder tissue classes can often mimic and share attributes with both the diseased...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Doyle Scott, Feldman Michael D, Shih Natalie, Tomaszewski John, Madabhushi Anant
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: BMC 2012-10-01
Series:BMC Bioinformatics
Online Access:http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/13/282
_version_ 1818209570640625664
author Doyle Scott
Feldman Michael D
Shih Natalie
Tomaszewski John
Madabhushi Anant
author_facet Doyle Scott
Feldman Michael D
Shih Natalie
Tomaszewski John
Madabhushi Anant
author_sort Doyle Scott
collection DOAJ
description <p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Automated classification of histopathology involves identification of multiple classes, including benign, cancerous, and confounder categories. The confounder tissue classes can often mimic and share attributes with both the diseased and normal tissue classes, and can be particularly difficult to identify, both manually and by automated classifiers. In the case of prostate cancer, they may be several confounding tissue types present in a biopsy sample, posing as major sources of diagnostic error for pathologists. Two common multi-class approaches are one-shot classification (OSC), where all classes are identified simultaneously, and one-versus-all (OVA), where a “target” class is distinguished from all “non-target” classes. OSC is typically unable to handle discrimination of classes of varying similarity (e.g. with images of prostate atrophy and high grade cancer), while OVA forces several heterogeneous classes into a single “non-target” class. In this work, we present a cascaded (CAS) approach to classifying prostate biopsy tissue samples, where images from different classes are grouped to maximize intra-group homogeneity while maximizing inter-group heterogeneity.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We apply the CAS approach to categorize 2000 tissue samples taken from 214 patient studies into seven classes: epithelium, stroma, atrophy, prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia (PIN), and prostate cancer Gleason grades 3, 4, and 5. A series of increasingly granular binary classifiers are used to split the different tissue classes until the images have been categorized into a single unique class. Our automatically-extracted image feature set includes architectural features based on location of the nuclei within the tissue sample as well as texture features extracted on a per-pixel level. The CAS strategy yields a positive predictive value (PPV) of 0.86 in classifying the 2000 tissue images into one of 7 classes, compared with the OVA (0.77 PPV) and OSC approaches (0.76 PPV).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Use of the CAS strategy increases the PPV for a multi-category classification system over two common alternative strategies. In classification problems such as histopathology, where multiple class groups exist with varying degrees of heterogeneity, the CAS system can intelligently assign class labels to objects by performing multiple binary classifications according to domain knowledge.</p>
first_indexed 2024-12-12T05:02:49Z
format Article
id doaj.art-361a5edd022b4df2bf54057d745228ce
institution Directory Open Access Journal
issn 1471-2105
language English
last_indexed 2024-12-12T05:02:49Z
publishDate 2012-10-01
publisher BMC
record_format Article
series BMC Bioinformatics
spelling doaj.art-361a5edd022b4df2bf54057d745228ce2022-12-22T00:37:10ZengBMCBMC Bioinformatics1471-21052012-10-0113128210.1186/1471-2105-13-282Cascaded discrimination of normal, abnormal, and confounder classes in histopathology: Gleason grading of prostate cancerDoyle ScottFeldman Michael DShih NatalieTomaszewski JohnMadabhushi Anant<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Automated classification of histopathology involves identification of multiple classes, including benign, cancerous, and confounder categories. The confounder tissue classes can often mimic and share attributes with both the diseased and normal tissue classes, and can be particularly difficult to identify, both manually and by automated classifiers. In the case of prostate cancer, they may be several confounding tissue types present in a biopsy sample, posing as major sources of diagnostic error for pathologists. Two common multi-class approaches are one-shot classification (OSC), where all classes are identified simultaneously, and one-versus-all (OVA), where a “target” class is distinguished from all “non-target” classes. OSC is typically unable to handle discrimination of classes of varying similarity (e.g. with images of prostate atrophy and high grade cancer), while OVA forces several heterogeneous classes into a single “non-target” class. In this work, we present a cascaded (CAS) approach to classifying prostate biopsy tissue samples, where images from different classes are grouped to maximize intra-group homogeneity while maximizing inter-group heterogeneity.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We apply the CAS approach to categorize 2000 tissue samples taken from 214 patient studies into seven classes: epithelium, stroma, atrophy, prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia (PIN), and prostate cancer Gleason grades 3, 4, and 5. A series of increasingly granular binary classifiers are used to split the different tissue classes until the images have been categorized into a single unique class. Our automatically-extracted image feature set includes architectural features based on location of the nuclei within the tissue sample as well as texture features extracted on a per-pixel level. The CAS strategy yields a positive predictive value (PPV) of 0.86 in classifying the 2000 tissue images into one of 7 classes, compared with the OVA (0.77 PPV) and OSC approaches (0.76 PPV).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Use of the CAS strategy increases the PPV for a multi-category classification system over two common alternative strategies. In classification problems such as histopathology, where multiple class groups exist with varying degrees of heterogeneity, the CAS system can intelligently assign class labels to objects by performing multiple binary classifications according to domain knowledge.</p>http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/13/282
spellingShingle Doyle Scott
Feldman Michael D
Shih Natalie
Tomaszewski John
Madabhushi Anant
Cascaded discrimination of normal, abnormal, and confounder classes in histopathology: Gleason grading of prostate cancer
BMC Bioinformatics
title Cascaded discrimination of normal, abnormal, and confounder classes in histopathology: Gleason grading of prostate cancer
title_full Cascaded discrimination of normal, abnormal, and confounder classes in histopathology: Gleason grading of prostate cancer
title_fullStr Cascaded discrimination of normal, abnormal, and confounder classes in histopathology: Gleason grading of prostate cancer
title_full_unstemmed Cascaded discrimination of normal, abnormal, and confounder classes in histopathology: Gleason grading of prostate cancer
title_short Cascaded discrimination of normal, abnormal, and confounder classes in histopathology: Gleason grading of prostate cancer
title_sort cascaded discrimination of normal abnormal and confounder classes in histopathology gleason grading of prostate cancer
url http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/13/282
work_keys_str_mv AT doylescott cascadeddiscriminationofnormalabnormalandconfounderclassesinhistopathologygleasongradingofprostatecancer
AT feldmanmichaeld cascadeddiscriminationofnormalabnormalandconfounderclassesinhistopathologygleasongradingofprostatecancer
AT shihnatalie cascadeddiscriminationofnormalabnormalandconfounderclassesinhistopathologygleasongradingofprostatecancer
AT tomaszewskijohn cascadeddiscriminationofnormalabnormalandconfounderclassesinhistopathologygleasongradingofprostatecancer
AT madabhushianant cascadeddiscriminationofnormalabnormalandconfounderclassesinhistopathologygleasongradingofprostatecancer