A simple way of quantifying immunostained cell nuclei on the whole histologic section.

Background: Quantification of nuclei, immunostained for proliferation or differentiation markers, is widely recommended for prognostication and treatment of numerous solid tumors. However, many problems concerning reproducibility of the results obtained still remain, partially due to the lack of standardization of the method used and to the difficulty of taking into account tumor tissue heterogeneity. Technical solutions exist but they are expensive and time consuming, and their complexity limits their diffusion in routine pathology departments.

Image analysis software for automatic DNA ploidy assessment of archival solid tumours.

Background: Image cytometry has proved to provide a good alternative to flow cytometry for DNA ploidy measurement of archival tumors. However, when interactively done this technique is unable to give statistically valuable results within an acceptable time for clinical oncology.

Methods: An image cytometer was developed for fully automatic DNA ploidy quantitation, focusing efforts on speed and accuracy.

[Automation of the cytometric analysis of the DNA content of solid tumors].

An automatic machine, dedicated to solid tumor DNA ploidy quantitation has been built in order to provide pathologists with a tool usable in clinical practice. Main efforts were focused on an automation of each step of the analysis and on an elimination of any subjective choice, while preserving the quality of measurement. As the software is independent of the machine architecture, it offers performances which increase in parallel with the rapid evolution of the computers.