Fig. 1. Spatial quantification of CD8⁺ T cells with a digital image analysis algorithm.

a Digital pathology quantified infiltration of CD8⁺ T cells in the stroma and the tumour epithelium. Scores for each compartment are displayed (n = 155 samples) and b converted into polar coordinates defining two digitally quantitative metrics to profile the immune phenotype of each tumour from the ICON7 training set (n = 155 samples): (1) x axis, the quantities of CD8⁺ T cells, defined as R = square root [(CD8 tumour)² + (CD8 stroma)²] and (2) y axis, the spatial distribution of CD8⁺ T cells, defined as θ = atan(CD8 stroma/CD8 tumour). Dots highlighted by a coloured square (blue for desert, orange for excluded and red for infiltrated) are the tumour cases displayed in c. c Example images of representative infiltrated, excluded and desert tumour-immune phenotypes, were shown to illustrate their distinct CD8⁺ T-cell distribution in digitally denoted stroma versus tumour areas. Tumour areas (green), stroma areas (yellow), CD8⁺ cells present in the tumour (dark-red), CD8⁺ cells present in the stroma (pink). This digital pathology analysis has been performed on 277 tumour samples. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.