Evaluation of nuclear morphology in adriamycin sensitive and resistant cells.

The adriamycin sensitive and resistant human breast cancer cells (MCF-7) were investigated by computerized image analysis for establishment of characteristic cell nuclei-morphological differences. Using specially developed algorithms and a large set of subvisual parameters, morphological features characteristic for the resistant cell line were described. The most useful parameters for distinguishing the resistant from sensitive cells are related to chromatin structure and include integral optical density per micron 2, the average area of chromatin region, and the integral density of the chromatin region per micron 2. Besides the size of the nuclei, the two features with the most discriminatory power belonged to those characterizing patterns of chromatin condensation. The results of quantitative analysis suggest that drug resistance relates to specific chromatin patterns. Compared to sensitive cell line, the resistant MCF-7 cells show distinguished coarse chromatin pattern with enlarged condensed chromatin regions.