On the maturation rate of the neutrophil

Fifty-three maturing bone marrow cells of the granulocyte cell series stained with Giemsa stain and magnified 1,000 times were scanned by a "computerized microscope" consisting of a LSI-11/23 microprocessor and a black-and-white video camera attached to a "frame grabber ." Each sampled cell was digitized into 70 X 70 pixels, each pixel representing 0.04 micron of the real image. The pixel gray values ranged between 0 and 255. Zero stood for white, 255 represented black, while the numbers in between stood for the various shades of gray. The cells represented six different stages of granulocytic maturation: myeloblast, promyelocyte, myelocyte, metamyelocyte , band form, and polymorphonuclear granulocyte. A discriminant analysis program selected 19 features best distinguishing between the six different cell types and computed five canonical discriminant functions defining a Space in which maturation was studied. In the Space, distance between two cells serves as a measure of similarity. The closer two cells are, the more similar they are and vice versa. This measure was applied here to express the degree of similarity between the neutrophil maturation classes, and since they represent states in the neutrophil life history, it is applicable also as a yardstick for the quantitation of differentiation. In the Space, the life history of a cell is represented by a trajectory originating in the myeloblast and terminating in the granulocyte state. Displacement along the trajectory represents cell maturation that is expressed relatively to the least differentiated state of the myeloblast. The further a cell from this state the more mature it is. The same yardstick also serves for differentiation rate estimates represented in the Space by displacement velocities that are derived from the known "transit times" of a cell in each state. The methodology is also applied for cell production estimates. Unlike other "computerized microscopes" serving for cell classification, the instrument described in this study is primarily a cell-comparator providing a precise measure of similarity between any two cells.