The use of quantitative cytology in identifying high-risk oral lesions in community practice.

Objective: This study evaluated whether quantitative cytology (QC) can disclose abnormal DNA content (aneuploidy) and abnormal nuclear morphology of high-risk potentially malignant disorders (PMDs) of the oral mucosa found in the community in reference to clinicohistopathologic features.

Study Design: A total of 171 patients at community-based clinic with suspicious oral lesions were evaluated with concurrent but independent histopathologic and QC assessments.

Results: QC-positive results were associated with oral lesions with higher clinical risk factors: large size, nonhomogeneous surface texture, and located at high-risk anatomic sites.

Malignancy associated changes in epithelial cells of buccal mucosa: a potential cancer detection test.

Objective: To analyze the presence of malignancy associated changes (MACs) in normal buccal mucosa cells of lung and breast cancer patients and their relationship to tumor subtype, stage and size.

Study Design: Buccal mucosa smears of 107 lung cancer and 100 breast cancer patients and corresponding healthy subjects were collected, stained by the DNA-specific Feulgen-thionin method and scanned using an automated high-resolution cytometer. Nuclear texture features of a minimum of 500 nuclei per slide were calculated, and statistical classifiers using Gaussian models of class-probability distribution were designed, trained and tested in 3 parts: (1) ability to separate cancer patient samples from controls, (2) cross-validation of classifiers for different cancer types, and (3) correlation of MAC expression with tumor subtype, stage and size.

In vitro model for studying malignancy associated changes.

Malignancy associated changes (MAC) can be defined as subtle morphological and physiologic changes that are found in ostensibly normal cells of patients harboring malignant disease. It has been postulated that MAC have a potential to become a useful tool in detection, diagnosis and prognosis of malignant diseases. An in vitro cell culture model system was designed to study interactions between non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and the normal bronchial epithelium of the human respiratory tract in vivo to see if the MAC-like phenomenon can be detected in such a system.

Increase of sensitivity of sputum cytology using high-resolution image cytometry: field study results.

Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer deaths in the developed world. There is no widely accepted method to screen for this cancer. The most commonly used method remains conventional sputum cytology, but this method is hampered by low sensitivity.

Nuclear texture features for classifying benign vs. dysplastic or malignant squamous epithelium of the larynx.

Objective: To search for nuclear features and feature combinations able to assess malignancy and premalignant changes on tissue sections of laryngeal squamous epithelium.

Study Design: A total of 139 lesions of benign changes (BC) (n = 44), epithelial dysplasias (ED) (n = 50) and invasive laryngeal cancer (LC) (n = 45) were retrieved from archival pathology specimens. The goal of this study was to identify the best features or feature combinations that discriminate BC from LC and also reflect the degree of ED.

Specific changes of chromatin structure in nuclei of normal epithelium adjacent to laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma. A preliminary study of 82 cases.

The aim of this study was to confirm the existence of specific nuclear texture feature alterations of histologically normal epithelial borders nearby invasive laryngeal cancer (NC). Paraffin sections of NC and of chronic inflammations unrelated to cancer (CI) were analysed for nuclear texture and for integrated optical density (IOD-index) and were compared to normal epithelium of patients without evidence of cancer (NE). Several discriminant functions based on nuclear texture features were trained to separate different subgroups.

The effect of primary fixation with standard postfixation and the duration of hydrolysis on nuclear features in image cytometry.

The effect of three primary fixation procedures, used in the preparation of routine cytological samples: air-drying, Delaunay, and Saccomanno fixation, with postfixation in modified Böhm-Sprenger fixative, on nuclear features as a function of hydrolysis time is reported. Three different cell types: lymphatic cells (tonsil), epithelial cells (buccal mucosa) and mesenchymal cells (uterine myometrium) were used for the study. Our findings show, that generally not all features have the same plateau times as the IOD (integrated optical density), and that many features show different values depending on cell type and fixation method.

Sputum screening by quantitative microscopy: a reexamination of a portion of the National Cancer Institute Cooperative Early Lung Cancer Study.

Objective: To investigate the hypothesis that image cytometry of sputum specimens can detect squamous carcinoma without requiring visually abnormal cells.

Design: The sensitivity and specificity of image cytometry were evaluated in a case-control study.

Material And Methods: Seventy-three sputum slides from the Mayo portion of the National Cancer Institute Cooperative Early Lung Cancer Study were restained by a modified Feulgen method.

Malignancy associated changes in cervical smears: systematic changes in cytometric features with the grade of dysplasia.

For almost ten years. Malignancy Associated Changes have been consistently found by means of high resolution image analysis of apparently normal uterine cervix cells. The study was performed on normal intermediate cells randomly selected from 1850 cervical smear slides classified as negative, mild dysplasia, moderate dysplasia and severe dysplasia.

Histometric texture analysis of DNA in thin sections from breast biopsies. Application to the detection of malignancy-associated changes in carcinoma in situ.

Objective: To evaluate histometric measurement of nuclear texture in breast biopsy sections in order to detect malignancy-associated changes in apparently normal tissue in the vicinity of carcinoma in situ.

Study Design: We previously showed that image cytometry measurements of nuclear features--foremost, texture features, describing the organization of Feulgenstained DNA in the cell--can be used to distinguish normal-appearing, diploid epithelial cells from patients with invasive carcinoma of the breast from those with benign biopsies. In that study, referred to as the "single cell analysis," images of at least 200 epithelial cells were acquired for each slide, and substantial user interaction was required to segment cells from each field.

Nuclear texture measurements in image cytometry.

DNA image cytometry is widely used in cytopathology as a means to obtain objective information concerning the diagnosis and prognosis of human cancer. Using specially designed devices, the high resolution spatial and photometric information is available in the images of a microscopic field. If quantitative DNA specific stains are used the chromatin distribution in the cell nuclei can be measured, which is one of the critical features for cytopathological analysis.