Malignancy-associated changes in breast tissue detected by image cytometry

In several tissues, nuclear differences have been described in normal-appearing cells from patients with invasive carcinomas compared to cases without invasive carcinoma, a phenomenon known as malignancy-associated changes (MACs). The aim of this study was to determine the presence of malignancy-associated changes in breast tissue. Image cytometry was performed on Feulgen stained tissue sections of patients with usual ductal hyperplasia with (n = 30) or without (n = 41) adjacent invasive breast carcinoma. Nuclear features of normal-appearing cells as well as of usual ductal hyperplastic cells were separately compared between the two groups. Many features of normal-appearing epithelial cells were significantly different between cases with and without invasive cancer. Significant differences were also found by measuring ductal hyperplastic nuclei instead of normal-appearing nuclei. Cases with or without cancer could be distinguished with a classification accuracy of 80% by discriminant analysis using 2 nuclear features derived from ductal hyperplastic cells. In conclusion, image cytometry on breast tissue sections shows that malignancy-associated changes can be found in normal as well as in usual ductal hyperplastic breast cells. This could be clinically relevant for the detection of occult breast cancer, for the prediction of risk in these lesions, and to monitor the effect of chemopreventive agents.