The Use of Texture Analysis in the Morpho-Functional Characterization of Mast Cell Degranulation in Rainbow Trout (Onchorhynchus mykiss)

Abstract

Degranulation of intestinal mast cells in rainbow trout was studied ex vivo by means of texture analysis and related to the maximal intestinal contraction elicited by degranulation itself. Two strips from the same intestinal segment from ten trout were sampled, processed for light microscopy and stained with Giemsa solution. One of the two strips was exposed to an incremental dose of compound 48/80 in an isolated organ bath before processing. Gray-level RGB channel equivalent and 8-bit gray-level images of five granular cytoplasm areas of mast cells for each section were analyzed for texture features and to evaluate discrimination possibility between treatment groups by means of linear discriminant analysis according to feature selection methods and RGB stacks. Differential mean values (after-before compound 48/80) of the green (r 2 = 0.84, p < 0.01) and blue (r 2 = 0.83, p < 0.01) RGB channels and 8-bit grayscale (r 2 = 0.76, p < 0.05) image correlated significantly with the respective value of maximal intestinal contraction. A possible acidic (anionic) nature for the putative pro-contractile basophil agonist can be inferred.

European sea bass gill pathology after exposure to cadmium and terbuthylazine: expert versus fractal analysis

“…False negative errors affect test sensitivity and are a more serious concern as compared to false positive errors (Mallatt, 1985;Manera, 2013b;Szczypinski et al, 2014). Thus from a clinical perspective there is always a need for greater test sensitivity.…”

The use of fractal dimension and lacunarity in the characterization of mast cell degranulation in rainbow trout (Onchorhynchus mykiss)

“…Mast cells (MCs) have been originally described in fish as eosinophilic granule cells due to the affinity of their granules to eosin, a misleading characteristic compared to typically and intensively basophile mammalian MCs (Sire & Vernier, ; Reite, ; Reite, ; Reite & Evensen, ; Mulero et al ., ; Manera & Borreca, ; Manera, ; Sfacteria et al ., ). Rainbow trout ( Onchorhynchus mykiss , Walbaum), as the other Salmoniformes, displays characteristic and large MCs cluster in the gastrointestinal tract (Ellis, ; Ezeasor & Stokoe, ; Sire & Vernier, ; Reite, ; Reite, ; Reite & Evensen, ; Manera & Borreca, ; Manera, ), and recently this feature has been claimed to make easier MCs identification and study by means of texture analysis tools, providing a promising alternative in MCs research to mammalian models (Manera & Borreca, ). Moreover, maximal intestinal contraction in rainbow trout has shown to correlate with intestinal MCs degranulation intensity, assessed by means of conventional texture analysis (image histogram, run‐length matrix, co‐occurrence matrix, autoregressive model, wavelet transform), and with the depletion of a possible acidic (anionic) putative procontractile basophil agonist stored in MCs granules, as a result of compound 48/80 administration (Manera et al ., ; Manera, ).…”

“…Rainbow trout ( Onchorhynchus mykiss , Walbaum), as the other Salmoniformes, displays characteristic and large MCs cluster in the gastrointestinal tract (Ellis, ; Ezeasor & Stokoe, ; Sire & Vernier, ; Reite, ; Reite, ; Reite & Evensen, ; Manera & Borreca, ; Manera, ), and recently this feature has been claimed to make easier MCs identification and study by means of texture analysis tools, providing a promising alternative in MCs research to mammalian models (Manera & Borreca, ). Moreover, maximal intestinal contraction in rainbow trout has shown to correlate with intestinal MCs degranulation intensity, assessed by means of conventional texture analysis (image histogram, run‐length matrix, co‐occurrence matrix, autoregressive model, wavelet transform), and with the depletion of a possible acidic (anionic) putative procontractile basophil agonist stored in MCs granules, as a result of compound 48/80 administration (Manera et al ., ; Manera, ). Furthermore, texture analysis was performed to discriminate trout MCs degranulation status in an ex vivo experimental model (Manera & Borreca, ).…”

“…Fractal dimension (D) and lacunarity (λ) were compared in MCs images taken from intestinal strips before and after compound 48/80 addition to evaluate if and how they were affected by degranulation. Moreover, fractal dimension and lacunarity were adopted to evaluate their discrimination efficacy between compound 48/80 degranulated group and not degranulated group and the results were compared with previously reported data obtained with conventional texture analysis (image histogram, run‐length matrix, co‐occurrence matrix, autoregressive model, wavelet transform) on the same experimental material (Manera & Borreca, ; Manera, ).…”

The use of texture analysis in the vertebral morphometric study of a lordotic chub (Squalius cephalus L.)

“…Texture may contain substantial information about the structure of any physical object and its graphical representation; therefore, it is a pivotal parameter in image analysis [4][5][6] . Referring to biomedical science, texture analysis has been successfully used in medical imaging, diagnostic histopathology and tissue morpho-functional studies [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] .…”