Morphometry to identify subtypes of leukocytes

IntroductionRecent studies in image cytometry evaluated the replacement of specific markers by morphological parameters. The aim of this study was to develop and evaluate a method to identify subtypes of leukocytes using morphometric data of the nuclei.MethodThe analyzed images were generated with a laser scanning cytometer. Two free programs were used for image analysis and statistical evaluation: Cellprofiler and Tanagra respectively. A sample of leukocytes with 200 sets of images (DAPI, CD45 and CD14) was analyzed. Using feature selection, the 20 best parameters were chosen to conduct cross-validation.ResultsThe morphometric data identified the subpopulations of the analyzed leukocytes with a sensitivity and specificity of 0.95 per sample.ConclusionThe present study is the first that identifies subpopulations of leukocytes by nuclear morphology.