Analysis of histological sections of disease tissues has traditionally relied on pathologist-based scoring. In an Advanced Online Publication in
Their approach, nicknamed AQUA (Automated Quantitative Analysis), involves a set of algorithms that can distinguish subcellular compartments and quantitatively assess protein localization. Validation experiments demonstrated that the AQUA methodology is at least as good as conventional pathologist-based evaluation. Camp et al. used this technique successfully to assess estrogen receptor immunohistochemistry of breast carcinoma samples and nuclear beta-catenin expression in colon cancer.
