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. 2023 Mar 10;13(1):4025.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-31205-7.

Gray level co-occurrence matrix and wavelet analyses reveal discrete changes in proximal tubule cell nuclei after mild acute kidney injury

Igor Pantic  1   2   3 , Jelena Cumic  4 , Stefan Dugalic  4 , Georg A Petroianu  3 , Peter R Corridon  5   6   7   8
Affiliations

Gray level co-occurrence matrix and wavelet analyses reveal discrete changes in proximal tubule cell nuclei after mild acute kidney injury

Igor Pantic et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Acute kidney injury (AKI) relates to an abrupt reduction in renal function resulting from numerous conditions. Morbidity, mortality, and treatment costs related to AKI are relatively high. This condition is strongly associated with damage to proximal tubule cells (PTCs), generating distinct patterns of transcriptional and epigenetic alterations that result in structural changes in the nuclei of this epithelium. To this date, AKI-related nuclear chromatin redistribution in PTCs is poorly understood, and it is unclear whether changes in PTC chromatin patterns can be detected using conventional microscopy during mild AKI, which can progress to more debilitating forms of injury. In recent years, gray level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) analysis and discrete wavelet transform (DWT) have emerged as potentially valuable methods for identifying discrete structural changes in nuclear chromatin architecture that are not visible during the conventional histopathological exam. Here we present findings indicating that GLCM and DWT methods can be successfully used in nephrology to detect subtle nuclear morphological alterations associated with mild tissue injury demonstrated in rodents by inducing a mild form of AKI through ischemia-reperfusion injury. Our results show that mild ischemic AKI is associated with the reduction of local textural homogeneity of PTC nuclei quantified by GLCM and the increase of nuclear structural heterogeneity indirectly assessed with DWT energy coefficients. This rodent model allowed us to show that mild ischemic AKI is associated with the significant reduction of textural homogeneity of PTC nuclei, indirectly assessed by GLCM indicators and DWT energy coefficients.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Histological and serum creatinine analyses conducted on rats in the sham and mild AKI groups. Brightfield microscopic images highlight the mild disruptions to tubular and glomerular integrities observed in kidney sections obtained from rats with (A) sham and (B) mild AKI. Similarly, the plots in (C, D) reveal the transient and substantial elevations in serum creatinine and blood urea nitrogen levels associated with a mild form of IRI, compared to the sham groups, respectively.
Figure 2
Figure 2
GLCM indicators used to distinguish the two groups. Mean values and standard deviations of nuclear GLCM indicators in mild AKI and control groups.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Discrete wavelet transform coefficient energies used to distinguish the two groups. Mean values of discrete wavelet transform coefficient energies of PTC nuclei in mild AKI and control groups.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Receiver operating characteristic curves. Receiver operating characteristic curves for hypothetical random forest (RF), support vector machine (SVM), and binomial logistic regression machine learning models.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Example of Mazda user interface with a digital micrograph of kidney cortex with AKI. The micrographs were converted to grayscale BMP format for ROI creation and subsequent GLCM and DWT analyses.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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