ViCE: An automated and quantitative program to assess intestinal tissue morphology

Abstract

Background and objective: The tissue morphology of the intestinal surface is architecturally complex with finger-like projections called villi, and glandular structures called crypts. The ratio of villus height-to-crypt depth ratio (Vh:Cd) is used to quantitatively assess disease severity and response to therapy for intestinal enteropathies, such as celiac disease and is currently quantified manually. Given the time required, manual Vh:Cd measurements have largely been limited to clinical trials and are not used widely in clinical practice. We developed ViCE (Villus Crypt Evaluator), a user-friendly software that automatically quantifies histological parameters in standard hematoxylin and eosin-stained intestinal biopsies. Methods: ViCE is based on mathematical morphology operations and is scale and staining agnostic. It evaluates tissue orientation, identifies geometrical structure, and outputs key tissue measurements. Results: The output measurements of Vh:Cd are concordant with manual quantifications across multiple datasets. Conclusions: The underlying mathematical morphological approach for ViCE is robust, and reproducible and easily adaptable for measurement of morphological features in other tissues.

Keywords

• Celiac disease
• Color deconvolution
• Histology
• Image analysis
• Mathematical morphology
• Segmentation