Goals of the cytology automation program of the National Cancer Institute.

The immediate goal of the Cytology Automation Program of the National Cancer Institute is the development of an automated system which will screen appropriate specimens from asymptomatic women for squamous cell carcinoma of the cervix and its precursor lesions, dysplasia and carcinoma in situ. This system should make one of three decisions on each specimen: normal, abnormal or inadequate with an acceptably low false negative rate. It is expected that the next step in evaluation of patients whose specimens have been identified as abnormal by the automated system would be a manual evaluation of a traditional cytologic specimen.