Every year, more than 1.4 million women worldwide are diagnosed with breast cancer and over 450,000 women will lose their lives to this disease, mostly due to metastases to bones, lungs, liver or brain. By using genetically engineered mouse models of metastatic breast cancer (for example: MMTV-PyMT) or orthotopic transplantation of primary breast cancer cells, the effect of various treatment regimens (systemic therapy, targeted therapy) on pulmonary metastasis formation can be determined, see [1][2][3].
This protocol can be used to quantify metastases in H&E stained lung sections. The APP detects the total area of the lung tissue, delineates and separates the metastases and quantifies the area for each metastatic nodule. In the end, the total tissue area, the number of metastases, the area of each metastasis and the metastatic area percentage are given.