Multifarious system for quantitative analysis of histologic compartments

A system is presented for measuring relative volumes of histologic compartments in microscopic slides. The computer program for that system was written by us as an MS windows 3.x application. The applied method of measurements, based on the "point-counting" technique, requires the recognition of the compartments, corresponding to the selected points of an image. The neural network was employed to facilitate the process of classification of the examined points. Nine descriptors of an image were selected as an input to the network (a pattern). Error-free compartment recognition was not always achieved because of some overlapping of the pattern classes. Nevertheless, the semi-automation of the assignment of the examined points to histologic compartments makes the measurements less laborious and time-consuming.