Abstract: In accordance with the embodiment described herein, we describe a method for evaluating muscle fiber nuclei and non-muscle fiber mononuclear cells, and biomarkers expressed within these and muscle fibers, within the context of muscle tissue using digital tissue image analysis. An algorithm process is applied to histologically stained tissue sections to extract the morphometric, staining, and localization features of a plurality of tissue objects. These features can be further analyzed to describe relationships between tissue objects or tissue object image analysis features. One or more of these image analysis features or relationships between objects and features are summarized to derive a patient-specific score. Patient stratification criteria are applied to the patient-specific score and patient strata membership is evaluated to infer presence of disease, natural course of disease, disease severity, treatment efficacy, or response to a therapy and eligibility for said therapy.