System and method for estimating a quantity of interest based on an image of a histological section

A method for determining a quantity of interest related to the density of organic tissue starts with a digital representation of a histological image of the tissue. The digital representation is converted to a binary image, to discriminate pixels that represent tissue of interest in the image. A box filter is applied to values of the pixels of interest to obtain a tissue density value for each pixel of interest. A quantity of interest is computed, based upon the tissue density values for the pixels of interest. A tangible representation of the computed quantity of interest, such as a numerical value, a graph, or a color representation, is displayed or otherwise presented via an interface.