COLOR DECOMPOSITION IN HISTOLOGY

摘要

The method according to the invention generates a color decomposition of histological tissue image data into density maps, where each density map corresponds to the portion of the original image data that contains one stain/tissue combination. After a microscope captures histological tissue image data from a tissue sample that has been stained with at least one stain, the said stain or stains being light absorbent, the method derives from the histological tissue image data a color mixing matrix with the columns of the matrix being color reference vectors. From this mixing matrix the method derives a density map, when the mixing matrix is well-conditioned, by applying a pseudo-inverse of the mixing matrix to the optical density data, and when the mixing matrix is medially-conditioned, by applying a piece-wise pseudo-inverse of the mixing matrix to the optical density data. The method according to the invention also generates stain/tissue combination efficacy measures.