BIOLOGICAL SUBSTANCE QUANTITATION METHOD, IMAGE PROCESSING DEVICE, PATHOLOGICAL DIAGNOSIS SUPPORT SYSTEM, AND IMAGE PROCESSING PROGRAM

摘要

A biological substance quantitation method for quantitating a specific biological substance from a sample in which the biological substance has been stained using, as a staining reagent, fluorescent particles in which a plurality of fluorescent substances have been agglomerated, said method being characterized by having an input step for consecutively varying a depth of focus at a prescribed interval and inputting, for each depth of focus, a fluorescence image indicating the appearance of the biological substance in the sample as fluorescence bright spots; a profile creation step for creating, from the fluorescence image at each depth of focus, a bright spot image of an extracted bright spot area and creating a brightness profile for each bright spot image; and a calculation step for creating, as a reference profile, a brightness profile for fluorescent particles measured beforehand, analyzing the brightness profile for each bright spot image at each depth of focus on the basis of the reference profile, and thereby calculating the number of fluorescent particles included in the bright spot area.