A critical evaluation of visual proportion of Gleason 4 and maximum cancer core length quantified by histopathologists

Abstract

Gleason score 7 prostate cancer with a higher proportion of pattern 4 (G4) has been linked to genomic heterogeneity and poorer patient outcome. The current assessment of G4 proportion uses estimation by a pathologist, with a higher proportion of G4 more likely to trigger additional imaging and treatment over active surveillance. This estimation method has been shown to have inter-observer variability. Fifteen patients with Prostate Grade Group (GG) 2 (Gleason 3 + 4) and ffteen patients with GG3 (Gleason 4 + 3) disease were selected from the PROMIS study with 192 haematoxylin and eosinstained slides scanned. Two experienced uropathologists assessed the maximum cancer core length (MCCL) and G4 proportion using the current standard method (visual estimation) followed by detailed digital manual annotation of each G4 area and measurement of MCCL (planimetric estimation) using freely available software by the same two experts. We aimed to compare visual estimation of G4 and MCCL to a pathologist-driven digital measurement. We show that the visual and digital MCC