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Virol Res J 2017 Volume 1 Issue 3
International Virology Conference
October 30-31, 2017 | Toronto, Canada
Quantitative assessment of severity of histopathological lesions in mink infected with Aleutian mink
disease virus
R Khomayezi
and
A H Farid
Dalhousie University, Canada
M
ink production is one of the most important agricultural
industries in Nova Scotia, the province with the greatest
number of mink pelts produced in Canada. Aleutian mink
diseasevirus (AMDV) causesAleutiandisease (AD) that seriously
threatens this industry. The main characteristics of AD in adult
mink are plasmacytosis (abnormally high number of infiltrated
plasma cells intissues), viremia, hypergammaglobulinemia, high
anti-AMDVantibody titers andpresenceof circulating infectious
immune complexes. Severity of histopathological lesions of
AD is often subjectively assessed under a light microscope;
thus, the results are not comparable among laboratories. The
objective of this study was to develop a quantitative method
of measuring the severity of histopathological lesions in AMDV-
infected mink using a digital image analysis system. Slides were
prepared from the kidneys of 5 infected mink and stained with
hematoxylin and eosin. Three images were taken fromdifferent
areas of each slide and were transferred to image analysis
software, Image Pro Plus v7. Infiltrated plasma cells could not
be accurately identified by automatic feature of the software,
hence were counted using its manual feature by clicking on
each of the intended cells and adding them to a list of counted
objects. For calculating the percentage of infiltrated plasma
cells, the number of total cells on each image was counted by
the automatic feature of the software. The software detects
the nuclei of cells based on the color intensity (gray scale) of
their constituted pixels. Therefore, it was necessary to find a
range of color intensity by which the software could correctly
count the largest number of nuclei. For comparison, total cells
were counted visually and by the software on one randomly
chosen area on 15 kidney images. Sensitivity and precision of
the software in counting total cells in each of the ranges of
gray scale (0 and 255) within the three color-channels (red,
blue, green) were calculated. The highest sensitivity (0.95) and
precision (0.99) were achieved in the red channel. The averages
of sensitivity and precision at each of the ranges of gray scale in
the red channel were calculated for the 15 images, which were
high at the rage of 0 to 90. This range of gray scale was used
to count the total number of cells in kidney slides of AMDV-
infected mink.
Speaker Biography
R Khomayezi has completed his Doctor of Veterinary Medice (DVM) degree from Azad
University of Tabriz and then worked as a Practitioner in his own veterinary clinic for
three years. He was admitted in a research-based Master of Animal Science program
at Dalhousie University in 2015. His research project is focused on finding relationships
between the degree of histopathological lesions and serological changes in AMDV-
(Aleutian mink disease virus) infected mink. Passionate about veterinary pathology
and virology, his research project has been a great fit. He is planing to defend his thesis
by the end of April 2018.
e:
RKhomayezi@Dal.Ca