Digital Image Analysis in Psoriasis
Title: Digital image analysis for the evaluation
of the inflammatory infiltrate in psoriasis.
Authors: Goedkoop AY, et al.
Publication: Arch Dermatol Res. 2005 Aug;297(2):51-9.
Epub 2005 Oct 8.
The authors wanted to see whether the use of digital image analysis
(DIA) for histological evaluation of cellular infiltration and
protein expression in psoriasis was as reliable as manual quantification
(MG) and semi-quantitative analysis (SQA).
To do this, the authors evaluated the number of CD3(+) T cells
and the expression of E-selectin in histologically-stained paired
skin biopsies from 11 patients with chronic plaque psoriasis before
and after treatment.
The authors found significant correlation between the manual
quantification method and digital image analysis method for the
number of T cells. However, the manual quantification method took
significantly longer than the digital method (20 hours vs. 6 hours).
The authors also found significant correlation between the semi-quantitative
analysis method and the digital image analysis method in determining
the expression of E-selectin. The digital method proved to be
faster (4 hours vs. 10 hours for the semi-quantitative analysis
method) and more sensitive as it can detect early changes.
The authors concluded for quantification of infiltration of inflammatory
cells in psoriasis skin lesions, the DIA method generated similar
results as the more established MQ and SQA methods in a reliable,
reproducible, and faster ways.
