Computational analysis on altered micro-nano-textural attributes of the oral mucosa may provide precise diagnostic information about oral potentially malignant disorders (OPMDs) instead of an existing handful of qualitative reports. This study evaluated micro-nano-textural features of oral epithelium from scanning electron microscopic (SEM) images and the sub-epithelial connective tissue from light microscopic (LM) and atomic force microscopic (AFM) images for normal and OPMD (namely oral sub-mucous fibrosis, i.e., OSF). Objective textural descriptors, namely discrete wavelet transform, gray-level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM), and local binary pattern (LBP), were extracted and fed to standard classifiers. Best classification accuracy of 87.28 and 93.21%; sensitivity of 93 and 96%; specificity of 80 and 91% were achieved, respectively, for SEM and AFM. In the study groups, SEM analysis showed a significant (p < 0.01) variation for all the considered textural descriptors, while for AFM, a remarkable alteration (p < 0.01) was only found in GLCM and LBP. Interestingly, sub-epithelial collagen nanoscale and microscale textural information from AFM and LM images, respectively, were complementary, namely microlevel contrast was more in normal (0.251) than OSF (0.193), while nanolevel contrast was more in OSF (0.283) than normal (0.204). This work, thus, illustrated differential micro-nano-textural attributes for oral epithelium and sub-epithelium to distinguish OPMD precisely and may be contributory in early cancer diagnostics.

中文翻译：

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阐明正常口腔粘膜和癌前病变的差异纳米纹理属性

对口腔黏膜改变的微纳米结构属性的计算分析可以提供关于口腔潜在恶性疾病 (OPMDs) 的精确诊断信息，而不是现有的少数定性报告。本研究通过扫描电子显微镜 (SEM) 图像评估了口腔上皮的微纳米纹理特征，并通过光学显微镜 (LM) 和原子力显微镜 (AFM) 图像评估了正常和 OPMD（即口腔亚型）的上皮下结缔组织。粘液纤维化，即 OSF)。客观纹理描述符，即离散小波变换、灰度共生矩阵 (GLCM) 和局部二值模式 (LBP)，被提取并馈送到标准分类器。最佳分类准确率分别为 87.28 和 93.21%；灵敏度分别为 93% 和 96%；分别达到了 80% 和 91% 的特异性，用于 SEM 和 AFM。在研究组中，SEM 分析显示显着（p< 0.01）所有考虑的纹理描述符的变化，而对于 AFM，一个显着的变化（p< 0.01) 仅在 GLCM 和 LBP 中发现。有趣的是，分别来自 AFM 和 LM 图像的上皮下胶原纳米级和微米级纹理信息是互补的，即微水平对比度在正常 (0.251) 中比 OSF (0.193) 更高，而在 OSF (0.283) 中的纳米级对比度比正常更高(0.204)。因此，这项工作说明了口腔上皮和上皮下的不同微纳米纹理属性，以精确区分 OPMD，并可能有助于早期癌症诊断。