The Presence and Location of Podocytes in Glomeruli as Affected by Diabetes Mellitus

摘要

The primary purpose of the kidney, specifically the glomerulus, is filtration. Filtration is accomplished through theglomerular filtration barrier, which consists of the fenestrated endothelium, glomerular basement membrane, andspecialized epithelial cells called podocytes. In pathologic states, such as Diabetes Mellitus (DM) and diabetic kidneydisease (DKD), variable glomerular conditions result in podocyte injury and depletion, followed by progressiveglomerular injury and DKD progression. In this work we quantified glomerulus and podocyte structural changes inhistopathology image data derived from a murine model of DM. Using a variety of image processing techniques, westudied changes in podocyte morphology and intra-glomerular distribution across healthy, mild DM, and DMglomeruli. Our feature analysis provided feature trends which we believe are reflective of DKD pathology; whileglomerular area peaked in mild DM, average podocyte number and distance from the urinary pole continued todecrease and increase, respectively, throughout DM. Ultimately, this study aims to augment the set of quantifiableimage biomarkers used for evaluation of DKD progression in digital pathology, as well as underscore the importanceof engineering biologically-inspired image features.