Morphometric discrimination of colonic tubular adenoma from adenocarcinoma by vector and tensor analyses

Four parameters were considered in this study to discriminate between tubular adenoma and adenocarcinoma of the colon. The deformation of the tubular profile (TD) and the average sector resultant (AR) were used as supracellular parameters, the vector resultant strain (VS) which represented the cellular crowding as a cellular parameter, and the deformation of the nucleus (ND) as a nuclear parameter. Statistical comparison between the two groups showed that all the parameters had high levels of significance. Direct discriminant analysis was applied to discriminate between the two diseases and all parameters showed large F-ratios; however, the evaluation by the stepwise discriminant method indicated that ND had a sufficient power of discrimination between the two diseases. Biplot with confidence interval ellipses (95%) was plotted for ND versus TD to demonstrate the graphical separation of the groups.