Publications by authors named "Ai-Ping Qu"

As a widely used proliferative marker, Ki67 has important impacts on cancer prognosis, especially for breast cancer (BC). However, variations in analytical practice make it difficult for pathologists to manually measure Ki67 index. This study is to establish quantum dots (QDs)-based double imaging of nuclear Ki67 as red signal by QDs-655, cytoplasmic cytokeratin (CK) as yellow signal by QDs-585, and organic dye imaging of cell nucleus as blue signal by 4',6-diamidino-2-phenylindole (DAPI), and to develop a computer-aided automatic method for Ki67 index measurement.

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Objective: To analyze morphological features of omental milky spots (MS).

Method: Hematoxylin-eosin staining and immunohistochemistry technique were used to study the omental MS of gastric cancer (GC) patients and rectal cancer (RC) patients. We focused on morphological features of MS and conducted quantitative analysis on the cells number and cellular constituents.

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Multispectral imaging (MSI) based on imaging and spectroscopy, as relatively novel to the field of histopathology, has been used in biomedical multidisciplinary researches. We analyzed and compared the utility of multispectral (MS) versus conventional red-green-blue (RGB) images for immunohistochemistry (IHC) staining to explore the advantages of MSI in clinical-pathological diagnosis. The MS images acquired of IHC-stained membranous marker human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2), cytoplasmic marker cytokeratin5/6 (CK5/6), and nuclear marker estrogen receptor (ER) have higher resolution, stronger contrast, and more accurate segmentation than the RGB images.

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Computer-aided image analysis (CAI) can help objectively quantify morphologic features of hematoxylin-eosin (HE) histopathology images and provide potentially useful prognostic information on breast cancer. We performed a CAI workflow on 1,150 HE images from 230 patients with invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC) of the breast. We used a pixel-wise support vector machine classifier for tumor nests (TNs)-stroma segmentation, and a marker-controlled watershed algorithm for nuclei segmentation.

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Article Synopsis
  • This study introduces a new fluorescent imaging technique using quantum dots to measure Ki67, a key marker for tumor growth in breast cancer, which improves accuracy compared to traditional methods.
  • The method allows for clear separation and quantification of Ki67 and cytoplasmic cytokeratin (CK) by producing distinct color signals that make analysis easier for pathologists.
  • Results showed that both Ki67 levels and the Ki67/CK ratio are significant independent prognostic factors for 5-year disease-free survival in breast cancer patients, highlighting the effectiveness of this new approach.
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Background: The expending and invasive features of tumor nests could reflect the malignant biological behaviors of breast invasive ductal carcinoma. Useful information on cancer invasiveness hidden within tumor nests could be extracted and analyzed by computer image processing and big data analysis.

Methods: Tissue microarrays from invasive ductal carcinoma (n = 202) were first stained with cytokeratin by immunohistochemical method to clearly demarcate the tumor nests.

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