Counting and sizing of tumor metastases in experimental oncology

Abstract

Practical presumptions and mathematical problems in estimating theIn addition to such parameters as morphology, the number of animals with " takes ", and survival time, the estimation of the number and size of tumor nodules plays an important role in experimental oncology. However, most workers in this field have confined themselves to arbitrary grading of the tumor sizes and counting of tumor nodules visible to the naked eye.The calculation of the actual size and number of circumscribed structures in various organs, using the size and numbers of their images in section, is an old problem in experimental morphology. This has been defined by Wicksell (1 925) as the " corpuscle problem ". Earlier works have mostly been concerned with such " normal " structures as lymphatic follicles, Hassal's bodies, pancreatic islands, or single cells and nuclei. These structures are more or less regularly shaped and have a fairly simple type of size distribution which can be postulated or determined (cf. Hellman, 1959). Hammar (1914) calculated the size and number of Hassal's bodies in the thymus. After serial sectioning of the organ the images of the corpuscles were determined planimetrically.The corpuscles were grouped according to their size and empirical correction factors were used for the calculation of the real size distribution from their apparent size in section. Wicksell (1925Wicksell ( , 1926) studied the mathematical relationship between the apparent and actual size distributions of spherical and ellipsoid bodies.He showed that this relationship could be expressed in an Abelian integral equation.

High-Resolution Proton Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Analysis of Metastatic Cancer Cells

“…There was no observable decrease in spectral resolution, suggesting that a high percentage of the cells had changed in a similar manner. The .lungs of all tumor-bearing animals were sectiondd and counted (10). The partially reyerted J clone tumor (in a rat inoculated with 108 cells) showed a mean of nine colonies in each 5-pm section, each colony containing 100 to 125 cells.…”

“…These hydrometeorological (HM) models generally relate accumulation on the glacier to winter precipitation, ablation to summer air temperature, and the net balance to the difference between accumulation and ablation; runoff may be used to calibrate input and output (9). These statistical relations, however, may not be stationary over long periods of time, and as a result the long-term mean balance may be seriously in error (10). In very few cases, the estimated mean balances have been calibrated or checked against known volume changes; these calibrated HM models provide results that can be used with confidence (11).…”

Heparin, dextran 1000 and metastasis formation after I.V. tumour cell injection in dextran non-sensitive rats

“…(Boeryd, 1965;Boeryd et al, 1966). Since these values were distributed in a log-normal way Rudenstam, 1968) the statistical calculations were performed on their log-values and the median values are given in the tables where V= median total metastasis volume in cm3 per cm3 lung tissue N = median number of metastases per cm3 lung tissue v = median average volume of a single metastasis in cm3…”

Low molecular weight dextran and experimental metastasis growth

“…The experiments were performed with sarcoma MCGI-SS (Mellgren et al, 1966) in syngeneic CBA mice. The tumour cell suspensions were prepared under sterile conditions by trypsin and DNase (Boeryd et a/., 1965).…”