Topographical analysis of the estrogen receptor expression in a cell line

An image analyse has been programmed for light microscopy evaluation of the nuclear estrogen receptor distribution in cultured human breast cancer cells. It is shown that a graph called minimal spanning tree (MST) is capable to deduce tumor cell heterogeneity of the estrogen receptor expression (ER). The variations of ER level were measured for MCF-7 cells as a function of culture time (until confluence). The existence of distinct subpopulations is shown. The degree of order of each subpopulation is determined. The cells appear to be differently, spatially distributed depending on their ER level.