Incorporating the Whole-Mount Prostate Histology Reconstruction Program Histostitcher c © into the Extensible Imaging Platform (XIPTM) Framework

There is a need for identifying quantitative imaging (e.g. MRI) signatures for prostate cancer (CaP), so that computer-aided diagnostic methods can be trained to detect disease extent in vivo. Determining CaP extent on in vivo MRI is difficult to do; however, with the availability of ex vivo surgical whole mount histological sections (WMHS) for CaP patients undergoing radical prostatectomy, co-registration methods can be applied to align and map disease extent onto pre-operative MR imaging from the post-operative histology. Yet obtaining digitized images of WHMS for co-registration with the pre-operative MRI is cumbersome since (a) most digital slide scanners are unable to accommodate the entire section, and (b) significant technical expertise is required for whole mount slide preparation. Consequently, most centers opt to construct quartered sections of each histology slice. Prior to co-registration with MRI, however, these quartered sections need to be digitally stitched together to reconstitute a digital, pseudo WMHS. Histostitcher c © is an interactive software program that uses semi-automatic registration tools to digitally stitch quartered sections into pseudo WMHS. Histostitcher c © was originally developed using the GUI tools provided by the Matlab programming interface, but the clinical use was limited due to the inefficiency of the interface. The limitations of the Matlab based GUI include (a) an inability to edit the fiducials, (b) the rendering being extremely slow, and (c) lack of interactive and rapid visualization tools