Semiquantitation of Axonal Injury in Traumatically Damaged Brains Using Color Deconvolution

In traumatic brain injury biomechanics, macroscale biomechanical events need to be correlated with microscale neuropathologic changes and improved quantitation of microscopic axonal injury is an essential component of lesion evaluation. To develop a novel technique for automatically identifying injured amyloid precursor protein immunopositive axons and aggregating these observations over a macroscopic brain dissection. A color deconvolution method was adapted into Matlab to identify clusters of pixels with colors typical of amyloid precursor protein positive tissue from large-scale brain dissection. The methodology is demonstrated in the brain of a sheep subjected to a controlled cortical indentation. The technique will be of interest to pathologists and bioengineers seeking to quantitate brain injury over macroscales.