Interactive morphometric procedures and statistical analysis in the diagnosis of ovarian dysplasia and carcinoma

We report on our continued experience with an interactive morphometric method recently introduced by us for the definition and diagnosis of ovarian dysplasia vs. normal or malignant epithelium. The main quantitative differences between these three diagnostic categories are based on 1) cytology of the nuclei (nuclear area, circularity factor, maximum chord) and 2) on stratification (distances of nuclear centers to the basement membrane and number of cells per unit length of basement membrane). We implemented our approach on live video images viewed on a monitor overlaid with a touch sensitive screen by one of two interactive procedures: 1) by tracing nuclear profiles (procedure DRAW) or 2) by tracing the basement membrane and touching the center of all nuclei (procedure NU-MEAS). In all cases statistical analysis was performed on a string of multiple variables by stepwise discriminant analysis. Now we have straightened our data basis and are able to obtain diagnosis of unknown samples with very high posterior probabilities. Both procedures are effective but NU-MEAS requires the least effort and seems to give the best statistics.