Aytpia status index of respiratory cells: a measurement for the detection and monitoring of neoplastic changes in squamous cell carcinogenesis.

A statistical procedure was developed for calculating an atypia status index (ASI) for cells from the bronchial mucosa. These indices represent the degree of abnormal changes in these cells and classify them as squamous metaplasia, mild atypia, moderate atypia, servere atypia or carcinoma. The classification accuracy of the procedure was more than 99% on trained data and was accomplished by minimizing the overlapping areas between the adjacent multivariate distributions of cell groups for selected features whose group means represent a monotonic function and for which the cell categories are distinguishable. The calculated ASI may reflect abnormal changes in the cell that may not be clearly evident visually. It appears that progression or reversal of bronchial epithelial atypia can be accurately monitored by studying the changes in the ASI, not only for preneoplasia but also for reactions to chemotherapy and various pulmonary infectious disease processes, such as influenza.