Classificazione morfologica della degenerazione di fibre nervose mieliniche nella patologia neuropatica

The loss of myelin sheath which surrounds a nerve fiber is usually quantified by the visual scoring of unaltered axons and the measuring of cross-sectional areas. An attempt at the automated classification of morphological alterations affecting de-myelinated nerve fibers is presented herewith. Thin cross-sections of rat sciatic nerves, both unaltered (controls) and affected by constriction (Bennet - Xie ligature) have been stained and imaged by optical microscopy. Image processing has included: spatial differentiation, fractal analysis, and Fourier transformation followed by non-linear filtering. A set of quantitative morphological descriptors has been derived, then submitted to multivariate statistical analysis, the goal being discrimination between control and injured nerve bundles. The first discrimination results are described.