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Quantitative features of chromatin structure in the prognosis of breast cancer
Author(s) -
Komitowski Dymitr,
Janson Catherine
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
cancer
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.052
H-Index - 304
eISSN - 1097-0142
pISSN - 0008-543X
DOI - 10.1002/1097-0142(19900615)65:12<2725::aid-cncr2820651221>3.0.co;2-u
Subject(s) - grading (engineering) , chromatin , medicine , breast cancer , pathology , nuclear medicine , radiology , cancer , biology , dna , genetics , ecology
In prognosis of breast cancer different parameters are in current use. Along with clinical staging the most important parameter appears to be histologic grading. Features of the grading such as nuclear pleomorphism proved to correlate closely with the proliferative activity and aggressiveness of the tumors. Because of difficulties in assessing and classifying the degree of nuclear pleomorphism by usual microscopy, the authors applied methods of digital image analysis. The study is a retrospective analysis of paraffine slides from the primary lesions of 60 breast cancers with 10 to 16 years of follow‐up evaluation. Using large sets of different parameters defining nuclear morphology and chromatin structure the authors extracted criteria with prognostic importance. These included nuclear area in μm 2 , eccentricity, integral optical density per μm 2 , average area of a chromatin region, integral optical density of a chromatin region per μm 2 , and the number of central chromatin regions per μm 2 . The results demonstrate that the criteria used enable prediction of prognosis with an accuracy of 92%.