Quantitative versus qualitative in the analysis of cervical squamous cell carcinoma

Our work aimed to reveal and explore connections between the cellular morphometric features and the differentiation degree of cervical squamous cell carcinoma. Six cases were studied, for which biopsy was performed before the radiation treatment. The microscopic exam diagnosed two cases of well-differentiated squamous cell carcinoma and four cases of moderately differentiated squamous cell carcinoma. The morphometric technique was developed in the Zeiss KS400 software environment, by implementing a script, which allowed measuring the cytoplasmic and nuclear areas and calculating the nucleo-cytoplasmic ratios. For each studied case, characterized by a number of 500-measured cells (randomly selected), the paper presents the mean, minimum and maximum values of the two types of areas, as well as the histograms of the nucleo-cytoplasmic ratios. These numerical results showed that the quantitative approach could play an important role in enlarging the perspectives on the evaluation of the differentiation degree in invasive squamous cell carcinoma. Special attention was paid to the nucleo-cytoplasmic ratios, since we supposed they are able to provide enough information for quantifying several levels in the differentiation of the cells. Although we have obtained encouraging results, our current work cannot be regarded as fully confirming this assumption, because of the small number of cases. By involving larger groups of patients in our further researches, we expect to get a solid confirmation, and, thus, to support the refinements of the radiotherapy schemes.