QUANTIFICATION OF ALZHEIMER-TYPE NEUROFIBRILLARY LESIONS BY AUTOMATEDIMAGE-ANALYSIS

Neurofibrillary pathology is seen in a wide variety of disorders such as Alzheimer's disease (AD), progressive supranuclear palsy and the Pa rkinsonism-dementia amyotrophic lateral sclerosis complex of Guam. To assess the pathological importance of these lesions quantitative studi es need to be undertaken. To date, most neuropathological studies have been based on qualitative, or at best semi-quantitative, data reporti ng the presence or absence of specific lesion types. To obtain such da ta traditionally involves laborious manual measurements, which rely he avily on the skill of the investigator and tend to have low inter- and intra-rater reliabilities. We have developed a novel analysis techniq ue, using colour image analysis, which can accurately quantify the tot al amount of neurofibrillary damage present. Furthermore we have devel oped a set of mathematically defined morphological criteria to allow o bjective discrimination between the three types of neurofibrillary dam age seen in the cortex immunostained with Alz-50. Use of this novel te chnique provides a reliable, rational means for the classification of neurofibrillary lesions. (C) 1996 Academic Press Limited