In daily routine the reticulin silver staining is used on bone marrow biopsy samples
as a gold standard for the characterization of myelofibrosis, however this method
does not provide information about the prefibrotic stage. Recently a specific immunohistochemical
method was introduced which may overcome these weaknesses of reticulin staining. Activated
fibroblasts responsible for stromal proliferation are highlighted by increased PDGFR
ß expression, which can be presented by immunohistochemistry in bone marrow samples.
Using this staining the pre-fibrotic stage can become detectable and we have information
about the disease activity. During development of new staining method it is important
to prove its reliability and usability. In this paper we introduce a digital image
processing method to measure paranchymal damage in digitalized histological slides
that can aid correct interpretation of the staining.
