Polarimetry feature parameter deriving from Mueller matrix imaging and auto-diagnostic significance to distinguish HSIL and CSCC

Abstract

High-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion (HSIL) is regarded as a serious precancerous state of cervix, and it is easy to progress into cervical invasive carcinoma which highlights the importance of earlier diagnosis and treatment of cervical lesions. Pathologists examine the biopsied cervical epithelial tissue through a microscope. The pathological examination will take a long time and sometimes results in high inter- and intra-observer variability in outcomes. Polarization imaging techniques have broad application prospects for biomedical diagnosis such as breast, liver, colon, thyroid and so on. In our team, we have derived polarimetry feature parameters (PFPs) to characterize microstructural features in histological sections of breast tissues, and the accuracy for PFPs ranges from 0.82 to 0.91. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to distinguish automatically microstructural features between HSIL and cervical squamous cell carcinoma (CSCC) by means of polarization imaging techniques, and try to provide quantitative reference index for pathological diagnosis which can alleviate the workload of pathologists. Polarization images of the H&E stained histological slices were obtained by Mueller matrix microscope. The typical pathological structure area was labeled by two experienced pathologists. Calculate the polarimetry basis parameter (PBP) statistics for this region. The PBP statistics (stat_PBPs) are screened by mutual information (MI) method. The training method is based on a linear discriminant analysis (LDA) classifier which finds the most simplified linear combination from these stat_PBPs and the accuracy remains constant to characterize the specific microstructural feature quantitatively in cervical squamous epithelium. We present results from 37 clinical patients with analysis regions of cervical squamous epithelium. The accuracy of PFP for recognizing HSIL and CSCC was 83.8% and 87.5%, respectively. This work demonstrates the ability of PFP to quantitatively characterize the cervical squamous epithelial lesions in the H&E pathological sections. Significance: Polarization detection technology provides an efficient method for digital pathological diagnosis and points out a new way for automatic screening of pathological sections.