Discriminant analysis on cells from developing squamous cancer of the respiratory tract.

Cytologic preparations made from the tracheobronchial tree taken by the Schreiber catheter have been scanned by three color microphotometry. The digitized cell images were processed by the analytical cytodiagnostic programs of the TICAS system. Cells were sorted into two control groups and five groups of increasing atypia ranging from normal epithelium to invasive squamous cell carcinoma. Standard statistical tests, including Wilk's Lambda, Rao's V, and the Kruskal-Wallis tests are performed on these subsets of cell image features. This study demonstrates that discriminant analyses permit differentiation between normal cells and those from marked atypia or carcinoma and that the classification achieves a high degree of agreement with visual assignment.