Relevance of chromatin features in the progression of esophageal epithelial severe dysplasia

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Gao, Feng^; | Jütting, Uta^; | Rodenacker, Karsten | Gais, Peter | Lin, Pei‐zhong

Affiliations: GSF‐Forschungszentrum für Umwelt und Gesundheit, GmbH, Neuherberg, Institut für Pathologie, D‐85764 Oberschleißheim, Germany | Cancer Institute, Institute of Pathology, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing 10021, China

Note: [] Address of correspondence: Uta Jütting, GSF‐Institut für Pathologie, Ingolstädter Landstr. 1, D‐85764 Oberschleißheim, Germany. Tel.: +49 89 3187 2555; Fax: +49 89 3187 3349.

Abstract: Since 1983, a long‐term clinical trial of esophageal carcinoma chemoprevention has been conducted in a high‐risk area in China. From this study, 25 esophageal severe dysplasia patients without therapy were selected for analysis. After 5‐year follow‐ups, 14 cases progressed to esophageal carcinoma, while the other 11 cases remained stable. Three Papanicolaou’s smears were used for each case, including one from the esophageal cytological examination at the beginning, two from the re‐examinations three and five years later respectively. About 100 visually normal intermediate cells were randomly collected per slide by high resolution image analysis. More than 100 features (morphologic, densitometric, textural) were extracted. The classifications were made by means of stepwise linear discriminate analysis at the single cell level as on the specimen level using up to ten features. In all three comparisons of patients with progression and with regression at time of diagnosis, three years after diagnosis and five years later, the correct cell classification rates were about 70%. The subsequent specimen classifications by means of the a posteriori probability (APOP) distribution of the cells in each case led to 80% correct classification. All selected features reflected the chromatin structure of nuclei. The result demonstrated that the chromatin structures of esophageal epithelial cells in severely dysplasic patients are different between cases with and without progression. These results suggest the possibility of the application of image analysis in the clinical trials to find the dysplasia patients with higher risk of progression, in order to reduce the number of patients for therapy.

Keywords: Esophageal severe dysplasia, progression, high resolution image analysis, texture feature, malignancy associated changes (MAC)

Journal: Analytical Cellular Pathology, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 17-28, 1997