Basic Stereology

Abstract

Abstract Many us who use microscopes are interested in the internal structure or components of three-dimensional objects. Often we must section these objects to observe these internal components. For many years, microtomes have been used to make physical sections, but in recent years confocal microscopes, MR imaging, CT scanners, and even standard optical microscopes have been used to obtain “optical” sections. Two-dimensional images of these different types of sections can be used to extract three-dimensional quantitative information about the objects and their internal components, The sectioning process reduces the observed dimensions of the object and components. With apologies to Rene Magritte, the structure portrayed in Figure 1 is not a three-dimensional glomerulus but a two-dimensional profile of a glomerulus. In most cases, interest is on the structure of the three-dimensional object and not the structure in the two-dimensional image. Thus, care must be taken when obtaining and interpreting data from two-dimensional images.