A morphometric classification of acute lymphoblastic leukemia in children

In order to reduce the subjective errors in subtyping leukemic lymphoblasts using the French-American-British (FAB) classification, computer-assisted morphometry was used. Bone marrow smears obtained at diagnosis from 99 children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) were analysed by this method and compared with the subjective FAB classification. The results confirm that lymphoblast morphology, as a single variable, is a very significant predictor of survival in ALL. This computer-assisted morphometric analysis would be of great value in large-scale clinical trials in ALL.