Morphometric analysis of the homogeneity of lymphoid cell populations in fine-needle aspiration cytology smears

Quantitative morphometry was used to evaluate the homogeneity of lymphoid cell populations in fine-needle aspiration cytology smears of lymph nodes from eight non-Hodgkin's lymphomas and four benign lymphoid proliferations. Using the standard deviation of log-transformed nuclear areas as the measure of lymphoid cell homogeneity, diffuse small cell lymphomas were found to be significantly more homogeneous than diffuse large cell lymphomas or benign lymphoid proliferations, but there was no significant difference in the homogeneity of the latter two groups. Two of four large cell lymphomas showed a bimodal distribution of nuclear areas. Methodologic issues--including the random selection of cells, the number of cells that should be counted in each case, the significance of microscopic field-to-field variation in this setting, and the significance of drift in observations during the examination of individual cases--are discussed.