Fractal Analysis and the Diagnostic Usefulness of Silver Staining Nucleolar Organizer Regions in Prostate Adenocarcinoma

Figure 4

Morphometric assessment of argyrophilic nucleolar organizer regions (AgNORs). AgNORs, counted as average per epithelial cells’ nuclei (a) or without discrimination for all the cells in the 40x area (b), show no difference between different pathologies. Roundness factor of the AgNOR dots on individual 40x images cannot account also for difference between pathologies ((c), (d)). Roundness factor of the AgNOR dots on collages, however, could differentiate each Gleason pattern from benign nodular hyperplasia (BNH) and atypical adenomatous hyperplasia (AAH) ((e), (f)). Averaged areas of AgNORs have a very limited value, being able to differentiate only AAH from Gleason patterns 4 and 5 ((g), (h)). Bars represent standard deviation. represents significance on corrected ANOVA testing.

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