Nuclear morphometry and DNA cytometry were performed in 6 normal salivary glands and 37 malignant tumors of the salivary gland. Multivariate discrimination analysis was used to grade the malignant salivary gland tumors. The discrimination rate was 100% for normal salivary gland, benign tumor, high malignant carcinoma and low malignant carcinoma. It was 66.7% for borderline malignancies. These results indicate that quantitative cytological analysis is effective and reproducible in the grading of salivary gland tumors. Stepwise multivariate regression analysis showed that there was a very complicated correlation between DNA content and nuclear morphometric parameters of salivary gland tumors.