Semiquantitation of Axonal Injury in Traumatically Damaged Brains Using Color Deconvolution.

Introduction:In traumatic brain injury biomechanics, macroscale biomechanical events need to be correlated with microscale neuropathologic changes and improved quantitation of microscopic axonal injury is an essential component of lesion evaluation.Objectives:To develop a novel technique for automatically identifying injured amyloid precursor protein immunopositive axons and aggregating these observations over a macroscopic brain dissection.Methods:A color deconvolution method was adapted into Matlab to identify clusters of pixels with colors typical of amyloid precursor protein positive tissue from large-scale brain dissection.Results:The methodology is demonstrated in the brain of a sheep subjected to a controlled cortical indentation.Conclusions:The technique will be of interest to pathologists and bioengineers seeking to quantitate brain injury over macroscales.