EDITORIAL COMMENT

Fractal is a natural phenomenon or a mathematical set that exhibits a repeating pattern that displays at every scale. The new terms entropy and fractal are used for histopathological diagnosis of tumours. In this study, the aim was to quantify the fractal dimension and Shannon’s entropy in the histological diagnosis of prostate cancer. After radical prostatectomy (n=34), histological slides of normal, hyperplastic and tumor areas of the prostate were analyzed. Fractal dimension, Shannon’s entropy and number of cell nuclei in these areas were compared. As Shannon’s entropy quantifies the degree of complexity in information in histological slides, there is a high probability of differentiating tumor tissue from normal tissue, indicating that this method could be useful in the diagnosis of prostate cancer (1996). They reported that fractal dimension analysis was sufficient to distinguish between tumoral and normal tissue in prostate at magnification at 40X and 100X. On the other hand, in the calculation of Shannon’s entropy, magnification at 100X and 400X differentiated tumor tissue from both normal and hyperplastic tissue. In this study, the authors suggested that the quantification of the fractal dimension and Shannon’s entropy, together with the number of cell nuclei, has potential clinical applications in the histological diagnosis of prostate cancer.