Frei, Anja L. and McGuigan, Anthony and Sinha, Ritik RAK and Glaire, Mark A. and Jabbar, Faiz and Gneo, Luciana and Tomasevic, Tijana and Harkin, Andrea and Iveson, Tim J. and Saunders, Mark and Oein, Karin and Maka, Noori and Pezella, Francesco and Campo, Leticia and Hay, Jennifer and Edwards, Joanne and Sansom, Owen J. and Kelly, Caroline and Tomlinson, Ian and Kildal, Wanja and Kerr, Rachel S. and Kerr, David J. and Danielsen, Håvard E. and Domingo, Enric and Church, David N. and Koelzer, Viktor H. (2023) Accounting for intensity variation in image analysis of large-scale multiplexed clinical trial datasets. Journal of Pathology: Clinical Research, 9 (6). pp. 449-463. ISSN 2056-4538
AI Summary:
This study reports an analytical approach to the largest multi-parameter immunoprofiling study of clinical trial samples to date. The authors developed an adaptive thresholding method to account for inter- and intra-slide intensity variation in TMA analysis.AI Topics:
Multiplex immunofluorescence (mIF) imaging can provide comprehensive quantitative and spatial information for multiple immune markers for tumour immunoprofiling. However, application at scale to clinical trial samples sourced from multiple institutions is challenging due to pre-analytical heterogeneity. This study reports an analytical approach to the largest multi-parameter immunoprofiling study of clinical trial samples to date. We analysed 12,592 tissue microarray (TMA) spots from 3,545 colorectal cancers sourced from more than 240 institutions in two clinical trials (QUASAR 2 and SCOT) stained for CD4, CD8, CD20, CD68, FoxP3, pan-cytokeratin, and DAPI by mIF. TMA slides were multi-spectrally imaged and analysed by cell-based and pixel-based marker analysis. We developed an adaptive thresholding method to account for inter- and intra-slide intensity variation in TMA analysis. Applying this method effectively ameliorated inter- and intra-slide intensity variation improving the image analysis results compared with methods using a single global threshold. Correlation of CD8 data derived by our mIF analysis approach with single-plex chromogenic immunohistochemistry CD8 data derived from subsequent sections indicates the validity of our method (Spearman's rank correlation coefficients ρ between 0.63 and 0.66, p ≪ 0.01) as compared with the current gold standard analysis approach. Evaluation of correlation between cell-based and pixel-based analysis results confirms equivalency (ρ > 0.8, p ≪ 0.01, except for CD20 in the epithelial region) of both analytical approaches. These data suggest that our adaptive thresholding approach can enable analysis of mIF-stained clinical trial TMA datasets by digital pathology at scale for precision immunoprofiling.
Title | Accounting for intensity variation in image analysis of large-scale multiplexed clinical trial datasets |
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Creators | Frei, Anja L. and McGuigan, Anthony and Sinha, Ritik RAK and Glaire, Mark A. and Jabbar, Faiz and Gneo, Luciana and Tomasevic, Tijana and Harkin, Andrea and Iveson, Tim J. and Saunders, Mark and Oein, Karin and Maka, Noori and Pezella, Francesco and Campo, Leticia and Hay, Jennifer and Edwards, Joanne and Sansom, Owen J. and Kelly, Caroline and Tomlinson, Ian and Kildal, Wanja and Kerr, Rachel S. and Kerr, David J. and Danielsen, Håvard E. and Domingo, Enric and Church, David N. and Koelzer, Viktor H. |
Identification Number | 10.1002/cjp2.342 |
Date | November 2023 |
Divisions | College of Medical Veterinary and Life Sciences > School of Cancer Sciences |
Publisher | Wiley |
URI | https://pub.demo35.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/466 |
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Item Type | Article |
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Depositing User | Unnamed user with email ejo1f20@soton.ac.uk |
Date Deposited | 11 Jun 2025 16:38 |
Revision | 17 |
Last Modified | 12 Jun 2025 08:59 |
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