SEMIAUTOMATIC PAPNET ANALYSIS OF PROLIFERATING (MIB-1-POSITIVE) CELLSIN CERVICAL CYTOLOGY AND HISTOLOGY

With the event of microwave-antigen retrieval it has become possible t o detect proliferating cells (staining positive for MiB-1) in cervical smears containing epithelial fragments and in paraffin sections conta ining cancerous cervical epithelium. The PAPNET system, using neural n etwork computing, is able to collect from the slides epithelial fragme nts with positive-staining nuclei. The nuclei in epithelial fragments are semiautomatically quantitated using the PAPNET-digitized images. T he parameter PPN (proportion-positive nuclei), in which the nuclear ar ea of the positive nuclei is taken into account prove to be superior t o the proliferation index for distinguishing moderate dysplasia from c arcinoma in situ. In repair cells, all four quantitative parameters ar e close to those of moderate dysplasias, indicating that this method i s unfit for distinguishing these two entities. However, we show that M iB-1 staining is valuable for the analysis of ''false-negative'' and ' 'false-positive'' smears, and for quantifying proliferation in section s of carcinoma in situ. (C) 1995 Wiley-Liss, Inc.