Infrared spectral imaging of lymph nodes: Strategies for analysis and artifact reduction

In this contribution, we discuss state-of-the-art methodology for the collection and analysis of hyperspectral images of tissue that will become useful in complementing classical histopathology. In particular, we discuss sampling strategies, data collection methods, and computational approaches to produce pseudo-color maps of large tissue sections of lymph nodes, up to about 100 mm(2) in size. The latter efforts include methods to reduce the presence of dispersion artifacts in IR transflection micro-spectra which can greatly impact the statistical analyzes performed on the data, such as hierarchical cluster analysis and principal components analysis.