A study of the histological basis of textural analysis

In an attempt to quantitate histological structure by textural analysis, the characters of a stained microscopical field were recorded as a frequency polygon of the relative areas defined by successive increments of optical density: this is known as the optical density/area (OD/A) profile. In a study of lymph-nodes in Hodgkin's disease and of carcinoma of the female breast, each stained tissue section was found to have an OD/A profile of characteristic shape: moreover, in each of the lesions studied it was shown that the shape of the profile could be replicated by summing the profiles of each constituent cell type and intercellular matrix in proportions determined by differential cell counts and direct measurement of the degree of cell packing in the tissue. In an investigation of the influence of specimen preparation on OD/A profile, it was shown that density of staining and section thickness were important variables. Using the density of staining of tissue lymphocytes as an internal standard, a simple method was developed of compensating for differences in the density of Mayer's haemalum staining greater than those met with in practice. Attempts to compensate for intentionally large differences in section thickness were much less successful, but this was considered to be relatively unimportant since, in practice, the variation in thickness of sections cut on a modern microtome by a competent microtomist had been shown to be slight and to have a negligible effect on the OD/A profile.