The clinical and morphological picture of the leukemic types of chronic lymphoproliferative disorders (CLLPD) shows considerable heterogeneity. Due to the unpredictable course of the disease, the clinical stages and other parameters used to date have been unable to identify patients at a high risk of disease progression. Therefore, the aim of the study was to find new morphometric, proliferative and/or kinetic parameters in different tumor mass compartments, i.e. bone marrow, peripheral blood and lymph node, which would be able to predict survival and disease progression, in order to define the proliferative kinetic index (PKI). In addition, the aim was to evaluate, in terms of survival, the diagnostic and prognostic value of the variables characterizing disease subtypes, clinical stages, tumor mass, time to tumor mass doubling, and lymphocyte count in total CLLPD population and its subgroups. Then, the proliferative and kinetic parameters were used in an attempt to assess the origin and distribution of malignant lymphatic cells in various clinical and morphological entities. Patients, materials and methods. The study included 155 patients diagnosed with CLLPD. A total of 657 puncture smears of bone marrow (n=236), lymph nodes (n=146) and peripheral blood (n=275) were analyzed. The analysis consisted of morphometric studies, assessment of the nucleolar organization region (AgNOR) characteristics, and image cytometry (ICM), performed in 71895 cells on a SFORM PC (VAMSTEC, Zagreb). The univariate and bivariate analyses were used on statistical data processing, and Kaplan-Meier method for the analysis of survival (Statistica 7.1). Results. Prognostic potential was demonstrated for many clinical, hematological, biochemical, immunophenotypic parameters, morphological characteristics of differential blood count and bone marrow, factors of disease progression, and morphometric, proliferative and kinetic parameters. The "single" and "multiple” programmed stops in the development of typical forms of leukemias and lymphomas, subacute and subchronic leukemias were hypothesized. Differentiation impairment may occur at any stage, and different "stop" locations result in different morphology and affinity to accumulation in bone marrow, peripheral blood and lymph nodes. The new parameters of modified analysis of diploid histogram were found to be appropriate for kinetic analysis by the method of image DNA cytometry. Also, the newly characterized types of AgNOR points, homogeneous, inhomogeneous, and annular, yielded a statistically significant correlation with DNA histogram properties and morphometric characteristics of the cell and nucleus, and were additionally found to play a role in the survival, type of tumor mass distribution, biological behavior of tumor disease, and morphological characteristics of lymphatic cells in bone marrow and peripheral blood. Correlation analysis of the morphometric, proliferative and kinetic characteristics revealed the low proliferative cells to possess small, homogeneous AgNOR, with the majority of cells in the peak of DNA histogram. The high proliferative cells had inhomogeneous AgNOR, mostly containing greater DNA amount than peak cells, or pathologic mitoses (DNA >4N), or the majority of cells being in the S-phase of the cell cycle. Cells with medium proliferative activity and annular AgNOR were in-between. Analysis of different tumor mass compartments showed the lymphatic cells with affinity to accumulation in bone marrow ("damaged" naïve B-lymphocytes) to regularly exhibit low proliferative activity (a lower percentage of cells in SFC and highest percentage of cells in the peak of the G0/G1 phase). The "programmed" cells with affinity to accumulation in lymph nodes migrated to lymph nodes, where they transformed to the stage of "programmed stop", exhibiting the characteristics of proliferative cells (an increased number of AgNOR, larger more proliferative inhomogeous AgNOR and lowest percentage of cells in the G0/G1 phase). The migration of cells from bone marrow to lymph nodes and between lymph nodes occurs in peripheral blood (a mixture of cells with low and high proliferative activity: a higher proportion of cells in SFC and at the same time in the G0/G1 phase of the cell cycle). Analysis of cell size and proliferative activity in different compartments of tumor mass revealed a regular pattern within total CLLPD population, and in the subgroups of B-chronic lymphocytic leukemia with variants (B-CLL+V) and typical B-chronic lymphocytic leukemia (B-CLL). Whereas the cells in bone marrow and peripheral blood did not differ substantially according to size and proliferative activity, an inverse pattern was observed between peripheral blood and lymph node. As small cells are inactive and larger cells more proliferative, the analysis quite unexpectedly showed the peripheral blood cells to be largest and most inactive, in contrast to lymph node where the cells were smallest and most active. Based on the most representative AgNOR and DNA characteristics (related to survival) in various tumor mass compartments, the PKI score was calculated for the CLLPD population as a whole and for B-CLL+V in separate. The CLLPD (p=0,00118) and B-CLL+V (p=0,03589) patients had a statistically significantly better prognosis when score of PKI was less than 4. Conclusion. Peripheral blood sample is inadequate and not representative for the study of disease progression or stability. The morphometric, proliferative and kinetic properties of tumor cells, now for the first time analyzed simultaneously in different tumor mass compartments, provide better assessment of the disease dissemination and progression. The morphometric characteristics of homogeneous, inhomogeneous and annular AgNOR, and characteristics of diploid histogram have confirmed the hypothesis that prognostically unfavorable/favorable subgroups could be identified and the course of the disease predicted even within the groups of neoplasms of relatively low malignancy such as CLLPD with subgroups.