Ls. Hibbard et al., COMPUTED DETECTION AND QUANTITATIVE MORPHOMETRY OF ALZHEIMER SENILE PLAQUES, Journal of neuroscience methods, 52(2), 1994, pp. 175-189
Senile plaques (SP) are the most characteristic neuropathologic lesion
s of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and studies of plaque cortical distribut
ion, density. and morphology may lead to new information about the ori
gin and pathogenesis of this disease. We have developed an automated c
omputer image analysis program to detect SP (including diffuse and mat
ure forms) and to measure SP size, shape, and fractional area or load
in digital micrographs of silver-stained tissue sections. The plaques
are detected with adaptive thresholding. requiring no user interaction
. Measures of SP size, morphology, and load are readily calculated fro
m the pixel values in the detected SP features. These measurements are
achieved accurately and exhaustively, and this method offers an alter
native to manual SP counting. We demonstrate its application to 4 case
s spanning the full range of the severity of the disease.