The mass of insulin-producing beta cells in the endocrine pancreas is an important determinant of the capacity for insulin secretion. Accordingly, (patho)physiological conditions such as pregnancy or insulin resistance, associated with increased beta-cell mass or as a compensatory mechanism to adapt to increased demand for insulin release. Conversely, beta-cell mass is significantly decreased in both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Thus, development of time- and cost-effective automated methods to assess both beta-cell mass and turnover (e.g. beta-cell replication) in pancreas sections are valuable for improving our understanding of pancreas morphology in health and disease.
This APP uses insulin-positive area to determine measures of beta-cell area normalized either to total pancreas area examined, or per islet, and calculates beta-cell replication based on the proportion of insulin-positive cells that are also Ki-67 positive.