Finding Out and Quantifying Nuclei Differences in Metaplastic Gastric Glands and Surrounding Nuclei

Metaplasia, growth of normal tissue in an abnormal location, is a precursor lesion of gastric cancer (GC). Despite the huge impact of the Operative Link on Gastritis Assessment based on Intestinal Metaplasia (OLGIM) protocol, the score used to qualify gastric pathology, this is subjectively estimated as a percentage of metaplasia, with three simple percent categories: 0-30, 30-60 and more than 60%. This paper objectively quantifies the nuclei distribution of the gland micro-environment in gastric biopsies with metaplasia. After nuclei segmentation, a Delaunay graph uses nuclei as nodes and size, shape and texture differences as inter-node edges. Centrality graph measures are analyzed for the sub-graphs within glands, and first, second and third order neighbors. Statistically significant differences (p < 0.05) were found when comparing control and metaplasia graphs, i.e., color, shape, and texture for the first order graph, only shape for the second-order graph and only texture for the third-order graph.