Cytologic studies of fresh cells in the oral cavity by the interference phase contrast microscope

Abstract

The use of cytologic diagnosis has played an important role on differential diagnosis for various types of diseases which found in the oral cavity and had some similarity with oral malignancies. But the accuracy of the method is depending on the subjective judgement of the researcher or cytologist. As objective and quantitative method of cytodiagnosis, the interference phase contrast micro scopy was introduced into the field of cytologice xamination of oral regions by the author.The studies were performed by ‘Nikon’ interfer ence phase contrast microscope. The measurement of optical path difference was carried out to get the so-called R-value which was given by following equation._??_R-value expresses quantitatively the optical mechanism of the formation of phase contrast image. Difference in R-value obtained from nuclei and nuclear membrane between tumor cells and normal epithelial cells originating in inflammatory lesions was significantly higher in the former cells (p<0.05). R-value decreased according to the time elasped after sampling, and the decreasing pattern became the useful measuring standard for squamous cell carcinoma and inflammatory epithelial lesions.Furthermore, cytologic changes of fresh cells in the oral cavity following by the time elasped was pursued by phase contrast microscopy. As for the figure of disappearing nuclei and nuclear membrane, about one-third cells of originating in adenocarcinoma, pleomorphic adenoma and in the inflammatory epithelial lesions showed these changes 90 minutes later after sampling, but the same findings in the tumor cells deriving from squamous cell carcinoma were observed 8 hours later. When the samples were stored at 5°, by occurring of these changes it took the time twice more. Blister formation from the periphery of cytoplasma was observed in epithelial tumor cells with the ocurring rate of 90.6% of 85 cases and in non-epithelial tumors with the rate of 88.9%. The similar blister formation was observed also in the normal epithelial cells originating ininflammatory lesions with the rate of 77.2%.