Subclassification of prostate cancer circulating tumor cells by nuclear size reveals very small nuclear circulating tumor cells in patients with visceral metastases

摘要

BACKGROUNDAlthough enumeration of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) has shown some clinical value, the pool of CTCs contains a mixture of cells that contains additional information that can be extracted. The authors subclassified CTCs by shape features focusing on nuclear size and related this with clinical information.