Tumour ploidy, morphometry, histological grading and clinical features in ovarian carcinoma: mutual relations.

The relationship between tumour ploidy and qualitative and quantitative histopathology was assessed in a series of 95 ovarian carcinomas. 67% of the tumours were non-diploid (DNA aneuploid). 56% of the early stage (I-II) tumours were non-diploid and 81% of the tumours in advanced (III-IV) stages were aneuploid. Histological grading failed to show a clear relationship between increasing malignancy grade and ploidy. There was a close association between DNA ploidy and nuclear perimeter, area and shortest and longest nuclear diameter: the nuclei of non-diploid tumours were generally larger. Also the number of mitotic figures per square millimeter of epithelium in the microscope image (volume-corrected mitotic index, M/V-index) differed significantly between near-diploid and non-diploid tumours. Discriminant analysis showed that 74% of the learning-set tumours (67% of the test set tumours) could be correctly classified in low-ploidy and high-ploidy categories with morphometric features (nuclear perimeter, M/V-index and volume percentage of epithelium). Characteristic features of non-diploid ovarian tumours--rapid proliferation and large nuclear size--could be assessed with morphometric methods which allowed a relatively large aneuploid tumour group to be distinguished.