NUCLEAR DIFFUSENESS AS A MEASURE OF TEXTURE - DEFINITION AND APPLICATION TO THE COMPUTER-ASSISTED DIAGNOSIS OF PARATHYROID ADENOMA AND CARCINOMA

A measure of texture, the nuclear diffuseness, was formulated for use in biological classification, and specifically to characterize quantit atively chromatin texture. Nuclear diffuseness corresponds to the amou nt of local intensity variation in the digitized image of a nuclear pr ofile. As a setting in which to test the efficacy of nuclear diffusene ss as a diagnostic tool, the identification of parathyroid adenoma and carcinoma was considered. Digitized images of sections of parathyroid chief cell nuclei were obtained from 16 biopsies, and the nuclear dif fuseness, as well as other morphometric descriptors, were computed. Wi th just the average nuclear diffuseness and average nuclear profile ar ea, jackknife (leave-one-out) classification using an artificial neura l network was able to diagnose correctly and unambiguously the conditi on (normal, parathyroid adenoma, or parathyroid carcinoma) in 15 of 16 cases. In one case, the neural network assigned a higher weight to th e correct diagnosis, but was unable to distinguish between normal and adenoma conclusively.