Multisurface Method of Pattern Separation for Medical Diagnosis Applied to Breast Cytology

Multisurface pattern separation is a mathematical method for distinguishing between elements of two pattern sets. Each element of the pattern sets is comprised of various scalar observations. In this paper, we use the diagnosis of breast cytology to demonstrate the applicability of this method to me...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 1990-12, Vol.87 (23), p.9193-9196
Main Authors: Wolberg, William H., Mangasarian, Olvi L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biological and medical sciences
Biopsy, Needle
Breast - cytology
Breast - pathology
Breast Neoplasms - diagnosis
Breast Neoplasms - pathology
Cell nucleolus
Cell nucleus
Cytology
Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted
Diagnostic Errors
Epithelial cells
Female
Geometric planes
Gynecology. Andrology. Obstetrics
Humans
Linear programming
Mammary gland diseases
Mathematical methods
Mathematical sets
Mathematics
Medical diagnosis
Medical sciences
Parallel planes
Pattern Recognition, Automated
Tumors
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Summary:Multisurface pattern separation is a mathematical method for distinguishing between elements of two pattern sets. Each element of the pattern sets is comprised of various scalar observations. In this paper, we use the diagnosis of breast cytology to demonstrate the applicability of this method to medical diagnosis and decision making. Each of 11 cytological characteristics of breast fine-needle aspirates reported to differ between benign and malignant samples was graded 1 to 10 at the time of sample collection. Nine characteristics were found to differ significantly between benign and malignant samples. Mathematically, these values for each sample were represented by a point in a nine-dimensional space of real variables. Benign points were separated from malignant ones by planes determined by linear programming. Correct separation was accomplished in 369 of 370 samples (201 benign and 169 malignant). In the one misclassified malignant case, the fine-needle aspirate cytology was so definitely benign and the cytology of the excised cancer so definitely malignant that we believe the tumor was missed on aspiration. Our mathematical method is applicable to other medical diagnostic and decision-making problems.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.87.23.9193