Jelena Pribic, Jelena Vasiljevic, Ksenija Kanjer, Zora Neskovic Konstantinovic, Nebojsa T. Milosevic, Dragica Nikolic Vukosavljevic, Marko Radulovic and Natasa Zivic, University of Belgrade, Serbia

Research in the field of breast cancer outcome prognosis has been focused on molecular biomarkers, while neglecting the discovery of novel tumour histology structural clues. We thus aimed to improve breast cancer prognosis by fractal analysis of tumour histomorphology. This study included 92 breast cancer patients without systemic treatment. Fractal parametersfractal dimension and lacunarity of the breast tumour microscopic histology possess prognostic value comparable to the major clinicopathological prognostic parameters. Fractal analysis was performed for the first time on routinely produced archived pan-tissue stained primary breast tumour sections, indicating its potential for clinical use as a simple and cost-effective prognostic indicator of distant metastasis risk to complement the molecular approaches for cancer risk prognosis.

fractal dimension, image analysis, lacunarity, breast cancer, prognosis, chemotherapy