S-phase fraction assessed by a variant of the rectangular model adapted to the flow-cytometric DNA histogram profile.

Measurement of S-phase fraction by DNA flow cytometry is widely used in the analysis of human tumors. The calculation of fraction of S-phase cells is performed either by means of curve-fitting techniques or by more simple planimetric methods. Estimates by the latter often suffer from subjectivity or poor adaptation to complex DNA histograms. We describe a variant which is based on the rectangular model. The height of the rectangle is automatically determined from the lowest density value in the S-phase interval. The variant was tested on 141 DNA histograms, and the results were compared with those obtained with other variants based on the rectangular model. The new variant is thought to circumvent some of the problems concerning subjectivity and disturbances caused by aggregate peaks.