Semi-Automated Computational Identification of Fibrosis for Enhanced Histopathological Decision Support

Myocardial fibrosis is a critical prognostic marker involving a progressive cascade of pathological conditions. Accurate assessment of fibrosis in myocardial samples is a routine but difficult procedure for pathologists. This article presents a semi-automated system designed to ease this task while providing pixel-level accuracy that exceeds manual estimation capabilities. The proposed innovative approach combines Gabor filters with CIELAB color space analysis to ensure the efficiency and interpretability of calculations. Testing on histopathological samples, differentiating between fibrous, healthy, and variant tissues, yielded a promising accuracy of 87.5% for images with fibrosis and 80% for all 45 images tested. This system successfully establishes a solid foundation for automated diagnosis, providing pathologists with a reliable and highly accurate tool for quantitative analysis of cardiac tissue.