Image analysis and morphometry in the diagnosis of breast cancer

Image Analysis, a complicated field still in the early stages of application to Pathology, has the capability of rendering major contributions to the diagnosis, prognosis, and management of malignancies of the breast. The present review summarizes the main problems and the general approach to the use of this technique for quantitating immunohistochemical stain results, obtaining DNA histograms, and making de novo diagnoses in routine materials of the Pathology service. In the case of diagnosis, the main steps are sampling, segmentation, and measures of chromatin texture. Currently, the limiting factor for all routine applications of image analysis is probably the absence of a reliable automatic nuclear segmentation.