THE VALUE OF DNA IMAGE CYTOMETRY FOR THE CYTOLOGICAL DIAGNOSIS OF WELL-DIFFERENTIATED BREAST CARCINOMAS AND BENIGN LESIONS

Cytological evaluation of breast diseases can lead to false diagnosis if benign lesions show epithelial atypia or if carcinomas are orthopla sic and well differentiated. In order to determine the potential usefu lness of image cytometry for discrimination between benign and maligna nt breast lesions, we studied 120 Feulgen-stained imprints, half from benign lesions with epithelial atypia and half from well-differentiate d carcinomas and determined values of parameters expressing DNA conten t, morphometry and chromatin texture. Twenty-five out of the 60 carcin oma imprints were found to be DNA-aneuploid and could thus be easily d istinguished from benign imprints, as, in our and other authors' exper iences, aneuploidy very rarely occurs in begnin breast lesions. When t he remaining 35 carcinoma imprints were compared with 38 benign lesion imprints, randomly selected from the 60 cases studied, only four case s were misclassified after a linear discriminant analysis; the most di scriminant parameters were those expressing the heterogeneity of DNA c ontent and the chromatin texture. Thus, in cases where cytological dia gnosis is difficult, image analysis of Feulgen-stained imprints may be a very useful tool for correctly discriminating benign from malignant cases.