Background: There is subjective disagreement regarding nuclear clearing in papillary thyroid carcinoma. In this study, using digital instruments, we were able to quantify many ambiguous pathologic features and use numeric data to express our findings.
Methods: We examined 30 papillary thyroid carcinomas. For each case, we selected representative cancer cells showing clear nuclei and surrounding non-neoplastic follicular epithelial cells and evaluated objective values of green light intensity (GLI) for quantitative analysis of nuclear clearing in papillary thyroid carcinoma.
Results: From 16,274 GLI values from 600 cancer cell nuclei and 13,752 GLI values from 596 non-neoplastic follicular epithelial nuclei, we found a high correlation of 94.9% between GLI and clear nuclei. GLI between the cancer group showing clear nuclei and non-neoplastic follicular epithelia was statistically significant. The overall average level of GLI in the cancer group was over two times higher than the non-neoplastic group despite a wide range of GLI. On a polygonal line graph, there was a fluctuating unique difference between both the cancer and non-neoplastic groups in each patient, which was comparable to the microscopic findings.
Conclusions: Nuclear GLI could be a useful factor for discriminating between carcinoma cells showing clear nuclei and non-neoplastic follicular epithelia in papillary thyroid carcinoma.
Keywords: Cell nucleus; Image processing, computer-assisted; Light intensity; Thyroid cancer, papillary.