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

Figure 6

Fractal analysis assessment of argyrophilic nucleolar organizer regions (AgNORs). Benign nodular hyperplasia (BNH), atypical adenomatous hyperplasia (AAH), and Gleason pattern 2 have significantly higher fractal dimensions (FDs) compared to Gleason patterns 3–5 (a). Skeleton reductions of the AgNORs could show significant differences only between Gleason patterns 2-3 group and Gleason patterns 4-5 group (b). Frequency distribution of FDs reveals global maxim values for the interval of 1.05–1.09 (c), and after plotting the average values for this narrowed interval, the filtered data revealed significant differences between BNH, AAH, Gleason patterns 2–4 group, and Gleason pattern 5 group ((d)-(e)). Bars represent standard deviation ((a), (b)) or standard errors of the means (e). represents significance on corrected ANOVA testing.

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