The study of causes and cures for ultraviolet B radiation (UVB)-induced non-melanoma skin cancers (NMSC) has been greatly facilitated by use of the albino SKH-1 hairless mice. These mice develop multiple tumors of different sizes and the severity of cancer is often measured by one or more of the four criteria, namely the prevalence, multiplicity, area and volume of tumors. However, there are inherent limitations of each criterion: the prevalence and number do not account for size differences among tumors, area measurement ignores the tumor height, and volume measurement overcompensates for the height at the cost of planar dimensions. Here, using our dataset from an ongoing NMSC study, we discuss the limitations of these four criteria, and suggest refinements in measuring prevalence. We recommend the use of three more criteria, namely the Knud Thomsen tridimensional surface that apportions optimal weightage to three tumor dimensions, weekly occurrence of new tumors and tumor growth-rate to reveal initiation and growth of tumors in early and late phase of NMSC development, respectively. Together, use of this comprehensive panel of seven criteria can provide an accurate assessment of severity of NMSC and lead to a testable hypothesis whether the experimental manipulation of mice has affected the early initiation or growth phase of NMSC tumors.

通过使用白化病SKH-1无毛小鼠，大大促进了紫外线B辐射（UVB）诱发的非黑素瘤皮肤癌（NMSC）的病因和治愈方法的研究。这些小鼠会发展出大小不同的多种肿瘤，并且通常通过四个标准中的一项或多项来衡量癌症的严重程度，这四个标准是肿瘤的发生率，多样性，面积和体积。但是，每个标准都有内在的局限性：患病率和数量不能解释肿瘤之间的大小差异，面积测量会忽略肿瘤高度，而体积测量会以平面尺寸为代价过度补偿高度。在这里，我们使用来自正在进行的NMSC研究的数据集，讨论了这四个标准的局限性，并提出了改进患病率的建议。我们建议再使用三个条件，即Knud Thomsen三维表面，将最佳权重分配给三个肿瘤尺寸，每周出现的新肿瘤和肿瘤生长速率，以分别揭示NMSC发育早期和晚期的肿瘤发生和生长。综上所述，使用这七个标准的全面小组可以准确评估NMSC的严重程度，并得出可验证的假设，即小鼠的实验操作是否影响了NMSC肿瘤的早期发生或生长阶段。