Digital staining of unstained pathological tissue samples through spectral transmittance classification

Histological structures of a pathological tissue sample convey information relevant to the diagnosis of the disease that might have afflicted the person. To reveal the morphology of these structures clearly, pathological tissues are stained. In this paper, a digital staining methodology for pathological tissue samples is introduced. Digital staining implies the application of digital processing techniques to transform the image of an unstained sample to its stained image counterpart. In the method, the transmittance spectra of the unstained and Hematoxylin and Eosin (H&E) stained multispectral images (16 bands) of specific tissue components are utilized. Two experiments were conducted to probe the possibility of the digital staining framework: the linear mapping of spectral transmittances, and the classification of spectral transmittances in conjunction with the linear mapping of specific transmittance data sets. The method classified the four tissue components, e.g. nucleus, cytoplasm, red blood cells, and the white region (region devoid of tissue structures), while the misclassifications between components with spectral transmittances that are closely similar were not completely rectified. (c) 2005 The Optical Society of Japan.