Morphometric Analysis of Malignant Lymphoma

ABSTRACT

Nuclear morphology and size are important in the diagnosis and classification of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The recognition of morphologic features of the lymphoma cells and their interpretation are somewhat subjective and often difficult. We apply the morphometric study in touch imprints from 22 cases of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma classified by Working formulation. Determination of the exact size of the tumor cells and substantial diagnostic value of this method compared with histology are proposed. Morphometric parameters, including nuclear area, perimeter, maximal diameter (D-max), diameter of an equivalent circle for a measured area (D-circle), circularity factor (From PE) and regularity factor (Form AR) are measured, using Kontron, user-controlled image analyser (IBAS-1). The correlation between morphometric and histologic diagnosis is relatively good, except for 2 cases of Burkitt's lymphoma, measured as large cell and 2 cases of large cell lymphoma measured as medium cell. The most reliable parameter of the nuclear size is D-circle. The parameters for the nuclear shape, Form PE and Form AR, also reflect the nuclear cleavage and polymorphous pattern. The large cell group shows more wide standard deviation than small and medium cell groups, reflecting heterogeneity and variability in unclear size of large cell group. We suggests the morphometric analysis using touch imprints is complementary diagnostic tool for more accurate and reproducible diagnosis.