Key result
Infrared spectroscopic imaging detects myocardial fibrosis with ~1.0 AUC and correlates strongly with stained images.
Why the study?
Myocardial fibrosis is difficult to identify with standard histologic techniques due to challenges in imaging, defining objective thresholds, and understanding molecular changes.
Does infrared spectroscopic imaging accurately detect and quantify myocardial fibrosis compared to standard histologic staining in cardiac tissue samples?
Does infrared spectroscopic imaging accurately detect and quantify myocardial fibrosis compared to standard histologic staining in cardiac tissue samples?
Effect estimate: AUC 0.998
Stain-free infrared spectroscopic imaging combined with machine learning provides a highly accurate, rapid, and label-free method for quantifying myocardial fibrosis in cardiac tissue.
May enable label-free fibrosis quantification in research; leaves open clinical adoption pending larger validation studies.
CONTEXT.—: Myocardial fibrosis underpins a number of cardiovascular conditions and is difficult to identify with standard histologic techniques. Challenges include imaging, defining an objective threshold for classifying fibrosis as mild or severe, and understanding the molecular basis for these changes. OBJECTIVE.—: To develop a novel, rapid, label-free approach to accurately measure and quantify the extent of fibrosis in cardiac tissue using infrared spectroscopic imaging. DESIGN.—: We performed infrared spectroscopic imaging and combined that with advanced machine learning-based algorithms to assess fibrosis in 15 samples from patients belonging to the following 3 classes: (1) patients with nonpathologic (control) donor hearts, (2) patients undergoing transplant, and (3) patients undergoing implantation of a ventricular assist device. RESULTS.—: Our results show excellent sensitivity and accuracy for detecting myocardial fibrosis, as demonstrated by a high area under the curve of 0.998 in the receiver operating characteristic curve measured from infrared imaging. Fibrosis of various morphologic subtypes were demonstrated with virtually generated picrosirius red images, which showed good visual and quantitative agreement (correlation coefficient = 0.92, ρ = 7.76 × 10-15) with stained images of the same sections. Underlying molecular composition of the different subtypes was investigated with infrared spectra showing reproducible differences presumably arising from differences in collagen subtypes and/or crosslinking. CONCLUSIONS.—: Infrared imaging can be a powerful tool in studying myocardial fibrosis and gleaning insights into the underlying chemical changes that accompany it. Emerging methods suggest that the proposed approach is compatible with conventional optical microscopy, and its consistency makes it translatable to the clinical setting for real-time diagnoses as well as for objective and quantitative research.
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A 2021 study studied Myocardial fibrosis (n=15). Infrared spectroscopic imaging vs. Stained images (picrosirius red) was evaluated on Detection of myocardial fibrosis (AUC 0.998). Infrared spectroscopic imaging accurately detected myocardial fibrosis with an area under the curve of 0.998 and correlated strongly with stained images.
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