Abstract

Prostate cancer is a common disease among men with an increasing number of incidences during the last three decades. Histopathological grading of prostate cancer is based on tissue structural abnormalities. Gleason grading system is the gold standard and is based on the organization features of prostatic glands. However, till now there is an uncertainty assign Gleason grade to intermediate stages of the disease, Gleason 3 and Gleason 4. The aim of this study was to explore the possibility of introducing fluorescent probes in this prostate cancer Gleason grading problem. Propidium Iodide with cellular nuclei binding pattern and Alexa 488-WGA with selectivity in polysaccharides with sialic acid residues were finally chosen. Their localisation patterns were assessed using confocal microscopy. Their colocalisation degree was quantified using special developed algorithms of image processing and analysis. The introduced metrics of colocalisation were successfully used to correct classify samples in Gleason 3 and Gleason 4 grades. These metrics were found appropriate to correctly classify 93.10 % of the images into the two classes using the logistic algorithm. The integration of confocal microscopy along with fluorescent probes to pathologist routine, is an approach that cloud lead to prognostic advances.

© 2009 OSA/SPIE