Relationship between electrical admittivity and quantitative histopathology in human prostate

Abstract

Passive bioelectrical properties have been demonstrated to provide sufficient contrast for use in differentiating benign from malignant tissue in a number of different organs including breast, prostate, cervix, bladder, and skin. The underlying microscopic anatomy responsible for these measured differences has been primarily speculative in the past. In this study we recorded electrical conductivity and permittivity spectra (100 Hz − 100 kHz) from 464 three mm diameter circular prostate samples. Each of these tissue specimens were stained with hematoxylin and eosin, processed onto microscopy slides, and digitized using optical microscopy. We used digital imaging processing tools to extract quantitative morphological features including total number of glands, average and total glandular lumen size, shape characteristics of the luminal spaces, and average and total glandular perimeter lengths. Correlative analysis was performed to assess the relationships between the tissue architectural features and the precisely co-registered electrical properties. We report on the findings from this analysis. This statistical assessment aims to provide a valuable piece of new information to help formulate a better understanding of the precise influence morphological architecture has on the flow of current through tissue.