Investigation of automated DNA diagnosis and grading of prostatic cancer

As a preliminary step towards a DNA-related automatic diagnosis and grading, the fine needle aspiration biopsies of 85 patients with prostatic cancer and of 20 patients with benign prostatic hypertrophy were subjected to DNA single-cell fluorescence cytometry. The DNA histograms were analyzed statistically by univariate data description, stepwise linear discriminant analysis and multiple regression analysis. The accuracy of the DNA-based malignancy diagnosis was 85.1%, with 10.6% false-negative and 4.3% false-positive results. The accuracy of the prognosis-related malignancy grading was, however, only 39.5% and thus unsatisfactory. The results indicate that a DNA-related diagnosis of prostatic malignancy is possible but that a similar automatic grading of prostatic cancer is not yet possible.