Quantification of Subcellular Molecules in Tissue Microarray

Abstract

Quantifying expression levels of proteins with sub cellular resolution is critical to many applications ranging from biomarker discovery to treatment planning. In this paper, we present a fully automated method and a new metric that quantifies the expression of target proteins in immunohisto-chemically stained tissue microarray (TMA) samples. The proposed metric is superior to existing intensity or ratio-based methods. We compared performance with the majority decision of a group of 19 observers scoring estrogen receptor (ER) status, achieving a detection rate of 96% with 90% specificity. The presented methods will accelerate the processes of biomarker discovery and transitioning of biomarkers from research bench to clinical utility.