Spectral classification of dual nuclear p16/ki67 positivity in pap smears

Abstract

An automated detection and quantification of high-risk human papillomavirus immunostains in Pap smears can potentially improve the drawbacks of human observes, reduce the number of equivocal or misinterpreted cytologic specimens and increase the throughput of slide screening. Towards increasing the accuracy and efficacy of Pap smear screening, we tested a spectral imaging approach to quantify the dual p16/Ki67 immunoreactivity of epithelial cell nuclei in Pap smears. We demonstrated that the classification of spectral signatures extracted from nuclear pixels is helpful in detecting nuclei of cells that are positive for p16 and Ki67 and distinguishing them from other nuclei that are positive only for one or negative for both markers. Sensitivity of the proposed method was 84.4% whereas the specificity was 99.9%. Although our results are preliminary, they suggest that the implementation of spectral imaging and spectral classifications can potentially offer better nuclei screening performances than methods utilizing conventional RGB imaging.