Comparison of Conventional Histology and Diffusion Weighted Microimaging for Estimation of Epithelial, Stromal, and Acinar Volumes in Prostate Tissue

Michael Zhao¹, Esther Myint², Geoffrey Watson³, Roger Bourne¹

Diffusion weighted microimaging of fixed prostate tissue reveals distinct diffusivity differences between epithelium, stroma, and acinal spaces1. In normal glandular tissue changes in the relative volumes of epithelium and stroma explain ~60% of the variation in signal fraction of a biexponential model of diffusion signal decay. We hypothesise that microscopic tissue volume changes may also explain the observed strong correlation between cancer Gleason grade and apparent diffusion coefficient measured in vivo. In this pilot study we used semi-automated morphometry methods to quantify partial volumes of epithelium, stroma and acinal space in H&E-stained histological images of benign and cancerous prostate tissue and compared these results with segmentation and statistical analysis of diffusion weighted microimages of normal tissue.