Correlation of liver fibrosis quantification by morphometry using HepaScan with the analysis of liver biopsies. A pilot study

Background: The gold standard for determining the degree of liver fibrosis (LF) continues to be biopsy evaluation. There are morphometry techniques that allow LF to be quantified on histopathological studies.Objective: To measure the correlation between LF histological evaluation and fibrosis percentage (FP) morphometric quantification using the HepaScan software. Material and methods: Observational, analytical, cross-sectional, prospective, prolective pilot study in which liver histological sections from 29 people who died from some liver disease and from 22 people who died from other causes (controls) were analyzed. FP was calculated with HepaScan on digital photographs of histological sections stained with the Masson technique, comparing it with the diagnosis established by three expert pathologists.Results: Four-hundred and one images from the group with liver disease and 250 from the control group were analyzed. Inter-observer agreement had a kappa index of 0.329. There were FP statistically significant differences (p = 0.0001) between histopathological classification groups. HepaScan predictive capacity based on the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.983, 0.812, and 0.895 for mild, moderate, and severe fibrosis, respectively.Conclusions: HepaScan showed very good performance for evaluating FP in histological sections, which is why it can contribute to qualitative pathological diagnosis.