How important is tumour shape? Quantification of the epithelial-connective tissue interface in oral lesions using local connected fractal dimension analysis.

Quantification of the local complexity of the epithelial-connective tissue interface (ECTI) in normal mucosa, epithelial dysplasia, and squamous cell carcinoma of the floor of the mouth was investigated by estimating the local connected fractal dimension in tissue profiles from histological sections. The use of certain parameters of the distribution of the local connected fractal dimensions of the ECTI classifies the cases belonging to these three histopathological diagnoses with 85 per cent accuracy by means of linear discriminant analysis. The values of the local fractal dimension were also used to produce colour-coded dimensional images of the ECTI, to highlight locations with higher irregularity that may correlate with locally invasive 'higher-risk' areas.