Integrated optical density (IOD), syntactic structure analysis, and survival in operated lung carcinoma patients

Histological sections of formalin fixed, paraffin-embedded tissue comprising 195 specimens of human lung carcinomas were Feulgen stained. The nuclei of the histomorphological images were segmented using an automated image analyzing system, and the attributed minimum spanning trees (MST) were calculated. Features related to the DNA-content of the nuclei (integrated optical density (IOD), IOD-entropy, S-phase related fraction, percentage > 5C, etc.), and structural parameters (minimum distance between tumor cell nuclei, minimum distance between tumor cells and neighboring lymphocytes, MST-entropy, MST-current of entropy (entropiefluss), distance between neighboring proliferating tumor cells, etc.) were measured. The following results were obtained: the measured IOD and MST features showed significant differences between the primary carcinomas and metastatic carcinomas in the intrapulmonary lymph nodes. The survival of patients was remarkably improved if the carcinomas displayed a low S-phase related fraction, a low percentage of tumor cells > 5C, a low number of stem lines, and a low MST-current of entropy.