Farahnaz Noroozinia - Dept. of Pathology, Urmia University of Medical Sciences, Urmia, Iran
Gholamreza Behjati - Dept. of Pathology, Isfahan Legal Medicine Organization, Isfahan, Iran
Shahram Shahabi - Dept. of Immunology, Urmia University of Medical Sciences, Urmia, Iran
Hamidreza Farrokh Islamlo - Dept. of Public Health, Urmia University of Medical Sciences, Urmia, Iran

Background & Objectives: Cancer is a serious problem for human being and is becoming a serious problem day-by-day .A prerequisite for any therapeutic modality is early diagnosis.Automated cancer diagnosis by automatic image feature extraction procedures can be used as a feature extraction in the field of fractal dimension. The aim of this survey was to introduce a quantitative and objective mathematical method for pinpointing the differences between malignantand non –malignant epithelial cells in urine cytology by the use of software analysis. Materials & Methods: Forty-one positive urine cytology and 33 negative subjects fromPathology Department of Imam Khomeini Hospital, Urmia, Iran (2003-2007) were selected atrandom. Digitalized images were prepared by the use of objective 100X (a digital video head) which subsequently were processed by the BeonitTM software version 1.3 (Tru Soft International inc. USA)to measure fractal dimension of nuclear boundaries. Results: Findings revealed statistically significant differences between fractal dimensions of nuclear boundaries of cancerous and non-cancerous smears (P=0.001). Study had selected a cut-offpoint to (1.732 ± 0.006) to discriminate malignant and non-malignant epithelial cells in urinary smears. Conclusion: Based on diagnostic accuracy measures (sensitivity and specificity), probability ofdisease measures (predictive value of a positive and negative test results), and likelihood ratio ofpositive and negative tests, it seems fractal dimension of nuclear cell boundaries for urinary smears can be used as a feature extraction in the field of automated cancer diagnosis.

Automated Cancer Diagnosis, Screening Machine Design, Fractal Dimension