This study gives a three-dimensional (3D) structural analysis of rat nephrons and their connections to collecting ducts. Approximately 4,500 2.5-μm-thick serial sections from the renal surface to the papillary tip were obtained from each of 3 kidneys of Wistar rats. Digital images were recorded and aligned into three image stacks and traced from image to image. Short-loop nephrons (SLNs), long-...

Mid-infrared spectromicroscopy studies on biological tissue sections require accurate identification of tumor-bearing areas in histology-stained and infrared-unstained tissue sections. Concordance was achieved as follows: paired stained and unstained thin (5 microm) human brain tumor cryosections mounted on slides were scanned with a Nikon Coolscan 4000 film scanner at 4000 dpi, edited with Ado...

Collagen plays a vital role in maintaining structural integrity and in determining tissue function. Therefore, methods to detect, quantify, and analyze collagen are valuable. Nevertheless, stains historically employed to detect collagen have disadvantages, principally a poor specificity for thin fibers. Conversely, picrosirius red, which has the capability to detect thin fibers, although freque...

Quantitative assessment of myocardial development and disease requires accurate measurement of cardiomyocyte volume, nuclearity (nuclei per cell), and ploidy (genome copies per cell). Current methods require enzymatically isolating cells, which excludes the use of archived tissue, or serial sectioning. We describe a method of analysis that permits the direct simultaneous measurement of cardiomy...