QUANTITATIVE STUDY OF DUCTAL BREAST-CANCER PROGRESSION - A PROGRESSION INDEX (PI) FOR PREMALIGNANT LESIONS AND IN-SITU CARCINOMA

The diagnostic subjective assessment of ductal premalignant proliferat ive lesions and in situ carcinoma of the breast produces unsatisfactor y results. Since the phenotypical cell changes in tumour progression t oward infiltrating cancer constitute a continuum, a grading on a conti nuous scale of values produces a more reliable and reproducible charac terization. The diagnostic assessment for any individual patient may b e expressed by a progression index (P.I): its numerical values are bas ed on the cellular changes measured in the individual cases. In this s tudy, the progression index is based on two morphometric features, nuc lear size and nucleolar area. In addition, the method presented may pr oduce a ratio, stating the relative likelihood that each case represen ts one of the conventional diagnostic categories. Such a likelihood ra tio may be obtained from the bivariate distribution of nuclear size an d nucleolar area for the conventional diagnostic categories.