Morphometry and cytodiagnosis of breast lesions

Cells aspirated from breast lesions and smeared on slides were subjected to computer assisted morphometric analysis. Three groups of cases were studied. The first were those collected from patients with known benign and malignant lesions. The second group were 143 unselected consecutive aspirates from breast lesions and the third, a group with a needle aspirate cytodiagnosis "suspicious of malignancy". The analysis showed the malignant cells to have larger nuclei with more anisokaryosis and more variation in the nuclear cytoplasmic ratios when compared with benign cells. When this form of semiautomatic analysis was applied to the "suspicious" group the accuracy of cytodiagnosis was improved.