A Two-Stage Approach for Segmenting Spatial Point Patterns Applied to Tumor Immunology

Abstract Number:

3238 

Submission Type:

Contributed Abstract 

Contributed Abstract Type:

Paper 

Participants:

Alvin Sheng (1), Brian Reich (1), Ana-Maria Staicu (1)

Institutions:

(1) North Carolina State University, N/A

Co-Author(s):

Brian Reich  
North Carolina State University
Ana-Maria Staicu  
North Carolina State University

First Author:

Alvin Sheng  
North Carolina State University

Presenting Author:

Alvin Sheng  
North Carolina State University

Abstract Text:

In tumor immunology, clinical regimes corresponding to different stages of disease or responses to treatment may manifest as different spatial arrangements of tumor and immune cells. Spatial point pattern (SPP) statistics can be used to partition tissue images according to these regimes. We propose a two-stage approach: first, local intensities and pair correlation functions (PCF) are estimated from the SPP of cells within each image. PCFs are reduced in dimension via spectral decomposition of the covariance function. Second, the estimates are clustered in a Bayesian mixture model with spatially dependent cluster labels. The clusters correspond to regimes of interest that are present across subjects; the cluster labels segment the images according to those regimes. Through Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampling, we jointly estimate and quantify uncertainty in the cluster assignment probabilities, the spatial dependence parameter, and the spatial characteristics of each cluster. The number of clusters is found through cross-validation. Simulations demonstrate the performance of the method, and it is applied to a set of multiplex immunofluorescence images of pancreatic tissue.

Keywords:

Bayesian mixture model|Biomedical imaging|Functional data analysis|Tumor immunology|MCMC|Spatial point pattern

Sponsors:

Section on Statistics in Imaging

Tracks:

Miscellaneous

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