Automatic Scoring of Tumor Buds

Tumor budding is an independent predictor of lymph node metastases in pT1 colorectal cancer and predictor of survival in stage II colorectal cancer¹.   

Goal: automatic scoring

Partners: joint effort with the Institute of Pathology of the University Hospital Erlangen

Current Status:

• developed automatic analytics App for an immunohistochemistry staining (pan-cytokeratin – PCK) that is able
• to detect tumor invasion front
• to detect tumor buds
• to detect hot spots and determine low/intermediate/high budding based on cut offs

• algorithm trained on 40x PCK-stained whole-slides

Database: over 100 whole-slides with over 50.000 annotated tumor buds

Solution:

1. Detect tumor bud candidates using classical image processing that evaluates size, color, and distance to tumor
2. Weed out false positives using a Convolutional Neural Network trained to classify tumor buds

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¹Lugli et al, Recommendations for reporting tumor budding in colorectal cancer based on the International Tumor Budding Consensus Conference (ITBCC) 2016

Poster presentation at Global Engage blog – Tumor budding in brightfield immunostained colon sections