Particle size analysis of nuclei (nuclear unfolding) in tumour pathology
Abstract
The widely accepted use of basic statistics of karyometrical parameters to describe nuclear polymorphism may encounter serious objections and more informative and sensitive methods are desirable.
In this study we have investigated the applicability of size analysis of cell nuclei (nuclear unfolding) for the quantitative description of nuclear polymorphism. The method is able to give a good description of polymorphism due to polyploidization in hepatocytes; it can detect small differences between nuclear size distributions of normal salivary gland cells and epithelial cells in benign salivary gland tumours. It is also shown that the method is suitable to detect nuclear changes due to aneuploidy in malignant tumours and to establish the proportional contribution of different cell populations to the tumours.