Computational Pipeline for Glomerular Segmentation and Association of the Quantified Regions with Prognosis of Kidney Function in IgA Nephropathy
Yoshimasa Kawazoe,
Kiminori Shimamoto,
Ryohei Yamaguchi,
Issei Nakamura,
Kota Yoneda,
Emiko Shinohara,
Yukako Shintani-Domoto,
Tetsuo Ushiku,
Tatsuo Tsukamoto,
Kazuhiko Ohe
Affiliations
Yoshimasa Kawazoe
Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1, Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan
Kiminori Shimamoto
Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1, Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan
Ryohei Yamaguchi
Ohshima Memorial Kisen Hospital, 3-5-15, Misaki, Chiba 274-0812, Japan
Issei Nakamura
NTT DOCOMO, Inc., Sanno Park Tower, 2-11-1, Nagata-cho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-6150, Japan
Kota Yoneda
Department of Reproductive, Developmental, and Aging Sciences, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1, Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan
Emiko Shinohara
Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1, Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan
Yukako Shintani-Domoto
Department of Diagnostic Pathology, Nippon Medical School Hospital, 1-1-5, Sendagi, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8602, Japan
Tetsuo Ushiku
Department of Pathology, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1, Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan
Tatsuo Tsukamoto
Department of Nephrology and Dialysis, Tazuke Kofukai Medical Research Institute, Kitano Hospital, 2-4-20, Ohgimachi, Kita-ku, Osaka 530-8480, Japan
Kazuhiko Ohe
Department of Biomedical Informatics, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1, Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan
The histopathological findings of the glomeruli from whole slide images (WSIs) of a renal biopsy play an important role in diagnosing and grading kidney disease. This study aimed to develop an automated computational pipeline to detect glomeruli and to segment the histopathological regions inside of the glomerulus in a WSI. In order to assess the significance of this pipeline, we conducted a multivariate regression analysis to determine whether the quantified regions were associated with the prognosis of kidney function in 46 cases of immunoglobulin A nephropathy (IgAN). The developed pipelines showed a mean intersection over union (IoU) of 0.670 and 0.693 for five classes (i.e., background, Bowman’s space, glomerular tuft, crescentic, and sclerotic regions) against the WSI of its facility, and 0.678 and 0.609 against the WSI of the external facility. The multivariate analysis revealed that the predicted sclerotic regions, even those that were predicted by the external model, had a significant negative impact on the slope of the estimated glomerular filtration rate after biopsy. This is the first study to demonstrate that the quantified sclerotic regions that are predicted by an automated computational pipeline for the segmentation of the histopathological glomerular components on WSIs impact the prognosis of kidney function in patients with IgAN.
