Patent ID: 8923595

Claim:
A method for the analysis of a cell collected from a patient, the method comprising the steps of: preparing said cell for atomic force microscopy imaging by freeze-drying, vacuum drying, or subcritical concentration-drying said cell; collecting a plurality of images of the surface of said prepared cell using an atomic force microscope, wherein at least one of said plurality of images is a map of adhesion of an atomic force microscope probe to the surface of the cell; processing said collected at least one image using an algorithm, wherein the algorithm calculates at least one surface parameter of the imaged cell characterized from the plurality of collected images of the surface of the prepared cell, and further wherein the algorithm utilizes the fractal dimensionality of the map of adhesion of the prepared cell; and determining whether said prepared cell is a cancerous cell or a non-cancerous cell based on the results of said algorithm, wherein said prepared cell is determined to be a cancerous cell if said calculated at least one surface parameter falls within a predefined range of surface parameters.