Background:

Animal models for hepatic fibrosis are currently used for clinical studies, and research works aimed to the progression and regression of the disease. In these, fibrosis is evaluated using histopathological assessment with high variability inter- and intra-observers. Digital morphometry in the space color LAB could reduce this variability; however, its correlation degree with the histopathological assessment is unknown.

Objective:

The objective of the study was to analyze the correlation between digital morphometry and the histopathological assessment of hepatic fibrosis in images of biopsies of a murine model.

Materials and methods:

We performed a descriptive, experimental, longitudinal, prospective, analytical, and correlational study. Fibrosis was induced by intraperitoneal injection of carbon tetrachloride in 16 Wistar male rats. We did a postmortem hepatectomy and took histological specimens stained by Masson trichrome, obtaining ten randomly selected images at ×10 in each liver. We quantified the fibrosis percentage (FP) by digital morphometry and compared it to the Metavir score given by three independent evaluators. FP was analyzed by a ANOVA test and Spearman Rho test.

Results:

The evaluated images had 70% concordance of the three evaluators. The analysis of the FP revealed fibrosis evaluation groups with statistical differences. The FP had a very high correlation with the histopathological diagnosis (p = 0.0001, r = 0-9). The ranges obtained from FP for each phase of fibrosis were: 0.4% for F0, 0.44-1.14% for F1, 1.52-2.74% for F2, 3.1-3.8% for F3y, and 5.12-6.12% for F4.

Conclusions:

The morphometric quantification had a high correlation with the histopathological evaluation of images of histological sections of liver biopsies of the murine model of fibrosis. The quantification of the FP by digital morphometry will be useful to increase the accuracy in the evaluation of liver fibrosis.