Morphometry of the prostate: I. Distribution of tissue components in XXXX .

@entity1 @entity1067 @entity5072 @entity189
OBJECTIVES: Morphometry, or quantitative image analysis, offers great promise in characterizing the various histologic types of @entity1067 ( @entity1067 ), but to date, a systematic study of the tissue components is lacking. Thus we employed morphometry to examine the distribution of primary @entity1067 tissues throughout whole @entity1 prostates. METHODS: The prostate glands of 20 @entity1 with @entity1067 were removed for @entity189 and subjected to a uniform, comprehensive, systematic quantification of the primary @entity1067 tissue components using the technique of digitization and point-count morphometry. RESULTS: We found the following average volumes among the 20 glands: epithelium, 19.9% (S.D. 5.1%, range 11.7% to 30.8%); fibromuscular stroma, 50.4% (S.D. 9.4%, range 32.2% to 74.4%); glandular lumina, 29.7% (S.D. 8.9%, range 11.9% to 47.5%). Within the individual prostates, we found symmetry in primary @entity1067 tissue distribution, except that the outer prostate was on average 25% richer in epithelium than the inner prostate (p < 0.05). When tissue composition was determined in simulated biopsy specimens, corrected for radial (ie, inner vs outer gland) orientation, the correlation with whole-organ composition was statistically significant for "percentage epithelium" (r = 0.72, p < 0.01) and for "stromal/epithelial ratio" (r = 0.63, p < 0.01). CONCLUSIONS: Major differences in primary tissue composition may separate different @entity5072 prostates. Primary @entity1067 tissues are rather symmetrically distributed within individual prostates. Quantitative histologic differences between prostates, potentially important in clinical decision-making may be accurately diagnosed by morphometry of radially oriented biopsy specimens.
