FRACTAL DIMENSION OF CHROMATIN REGIONS IN HISTOLOGICAL PICTURES REVEALS THE PRESENCE OF EPITHELIAL TUMOURS

Abstract

This study examines the hypothesis that the fractal dimension of chromatin regions in histological pictures has a systematic and measurable variation when tumors emerge in a tissue. We used 194 histological pictures of healthy tissue and of tissue of the same nature with tumoral changes from 24 cases of dogs and cats treated for malignant and benign epithelial tumors: carcinoma, seminoma, adenoma, trichoblastoma, epitelioma. Fractal analysis was performed on pictures reduced to selected chromatin areas. Results indicate that for chromatin pictures at x40 magnification the fractal dimension is significantly increased when tumoral changes are present on more than 20% of the picture area. The largest effect on fractal dimension was identified for mammary gland carcinoma.