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Biomedical subjects

B Nordin

Publications and source records attributed to B Nordin.

28 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

Multifocal breast carcinoma.

The present study comprises 173 breast cancers in women living in Sweden. Mastectomy was performed and the surgical specimens were thoroughly scrutinized histopathologically with special attention given to the mammary tissue outside the dominant mass. Fifty-two patients (30 percent) had multifocal growth in the same breast as the dominant breast cancer. The patients have been followed up for 3 years after operation and compared with age-matched controls. The multifocal growth was not correlated with age, size of the tumor or death of the patient within 3 years. A previous diagnosis of benign breast disease was significantly more common among the cancer patients than among the controls, although it was unrelated to multifocal growth. This study stresses the importance of considering the high incidence of multifocal growth of breast cancer when discussing treatment by operation less radical than mastectomy.

Breast Diseases↗

TULIPS: the Uppsala-Linkoping Image Processing System.

The Uppsala-Linkoping Image Processing System, TULIPS, is described. TULIPS, a hardware-software system designed for cell image processing, was developed at Uppsala University Hospital in cooperation with the Department of Electrical Engineering at Linkoping University. The hardware part of the image processing system is built around a high-speed data bus with a capacity of about 40 M byte/sec connected to a PDP-11/55 host computer. An image memory, an LSI-11 microcomputer and a video interface for displaying the image memory content on a TV monitor are also connected to the high-speed bus. An automated microscope and a "Poulsen processor" for low resolution segmentation, both to be attached to the high-speed bus, are being developed. A monitor and an interpreter for an image processing language have been implemented on the host computer. This software system allows interactive, as well as batch, processing. The degree of user interaction is easily adapted to the user's needs. The image processing language is command oriented, and it is easily expanded by adding new commands. The system has been used both for studies in the field of quantitative microscopy and as a platform for development and testing of new image processing algorithms.

Computers↗

Carcinoembryonic antigen in serum of unselected breast-cancer patients and of non-hospitalized controls.

A series of consecutive unselected patients with primary breast carcinoma and their age-matched controls were studied for serum CEA in relation to clinical findings. Raised CEA was found in a similar frequency in patients with primary breast cancer (pre- and postoperative) and in the control women: 16%, 11% and 11%, respectively, exceeded the selected upper limit of the reference range (13 ng/ml) with a double-antibody radioimmunoassay. In the breast-cancer patients, however, 48% of the raised CEA levels exceeded 16 ng/ml, compared with only 20% in the controls. Significant correlations (r approximately 0.3) were found between CEA levels and tumour size, TNM classification and a combined clinical and histopathological classification. A high frequency of raised CEA values in the advanced breast-cancer patients was the essential contribution to these positive correlations. A correlation coefficient of 0.6 was found between pre- and postoperative CEA values. The frequency of smoking and/or chronic disease was unexpectedly high in patients as well as in controls with high CEA.

Adult↗

Analysis of reproducibility of subjective grading systems for breast carcinoma.

The inter- and intra-observer reproducibility of three grading systems for breast cancer has been analysed: those of the World Health Organisation, of Black, and of Hartveit. In addition, the components forming the basis of these grading systems were analysed separately with regard to reproducibility and interrelationship. In this analysis, degree of differentiation was also included as a parameter. The grading systems of WHO and of Black gave a stratification of the material into three categories of tumours, but that of Hartveit did not. All three systems had a low inter- and intra-observer reproducibility. Truncated component analysis indicated that the grading systems of WHO and of Black are closely related to each other and to the 'nuclear lobulation' component of Hartveit's system. The components 'pleomorphism', 'mitotic frequency', and 'hyperchromasia' of the WHO system were closely interrelated. Descriptors such as 'differentiation' and 'tubule formation' were interrelated but acted in a different direction from the others.

Breast Neoplasms↗

High resolution segmentation of cervical cells.

A major problem in the automation of cervical cytology screening is the segmentation of cell images. This paper presents the present status of the work on that problem at the University of Uppsala. A dual resolution system is used. Suspect malignant cells are located at 4 mu resolution. Each such cell is rescanned at 0.5 mu resolution at two different wavelengths, 530 and 570 nm. The nucleus and the cytoplasm are isolated each by two independent methods. For the nucleus adaptive thresholding in the histogram of the 570 nm image and a contouring in a radially transformed version of that image is used. For the cytoplasm a two dimensional thresholding in the 2D histogram and a contouring in a radially transformed version of the 530 nm image is used. If the two nuclear masks agree the surrounding area is checked for disturbing objects. If also the cytoplasm masks agree and are without disturbing objects the whole cell is accepted. The result of the cytoplasm masks agree and are without disturbing objects the whole cell is accepted. The result of the segmentation is thus three categories; free cells, free nuclei and rejected objects. The shape of the objects belonging to the former two categories is checked and irregularly shaped ones are rejected as probably consisting of several overlapping nuclei. Cells passing also this test are classified as normal or malignant. The experience from using this algorithm is discussed and areas for further research are pointed out.

Cell Nucleus↗

Computer analysis of cervical cells. Automatic feature extraction and classification.

A prescreening instrument for cervical smears using computerized image processing and pattern recognition techniques requires that single cells in the specimen can be automatically isolated and analyzed. This paper describes a dual wavelength method for automatic isolation of the cytoplasm and nuclei of cells. Density-oriented, shape-oriented and texture-oriented parameters were calculated and evaluated for more than 600 cells. It is shown that the computer can be taught to distinguish between normal and atypical cells with an accuracy of ca. 97%, while human classification reproducibility is ca. 95%. In addition, an attempt to assign a measure of atypia to individual cells is described.

Cell Nucleus↗

Computerized nuclear morphometry as an objective method for characterizing human cancer cell populations.

A new method for measuring differences in nuclear detail in chrome alum gallocyanin-stained nuclei of cells from human breast cancers was compared with conventional subjective grading and classification systems. The new method, termed computerized nuclear morphometry (CNM), gives a multivariate numerical score that correlates well with nuclear atypia and gives a higher reproducibility of classification than do subjective observations with conventional histological preparations. When 100 individual nuclei from each of 137 breast cancers were examined by CNM, there was a broad CNM score variation between patients but a good reproducibility for each tumor. When different parts of the same tumor were sampled, there was good reproducibility between samples, indicating that some breast cancers at least are "geometrically monoclonal." When these cancers were compared by the grading systems of WHO and Black, correlations of 0.43 and 0.48, respectively, were found. There was a poor correlation between CNM and classifications of tumor type, but in general there were high values for CNM in medullary tumors and low values in mucous tumors. Correlations between CNM and tumor progression and prognosis await future study of patients participating in the study.

Breast Neoplasms↗