Human Papillomavirus (HPV) is the main cause of cervical cancer and its precursor lesions. Tests for HPV are being widely used in adjunctive testing in cervical cytology specimens with atypical cells of undetermined significance (ASCUS) and low grade of intraepithelial lesion (LSIL) in order to identify the women at true risk of harbouring histological high grade lesions, who require treatment.
It is well known that tests for HPV are highly sensitive but lack specificity, especially in women with LSIL. Immunocytochemical dual staining for p16 and Ki-67 is a promising test, and the few studies published so far have showed high specificity and retained sensitivity for identifying high grade lesions.
However, the evaluation by microscope is subjective and labour-intensive, and preliminary results have shown that the test suffers from limited reproducibility. With the “p16+Ki-67, Cervical Cancer, ICC” APP automatic detection of the p16/Ki-67 dual stained cells is possible thereby converting manual inspection of all cells on a slide to a final review of suspicious cells selected by the computer.
The APP can be used for quantifying the p16/Ki-67 dual stained cells and outputs a score for each p16/Ki-67 nuclei based on the degree of positively stained cytoplasm.