Counting Cells in Tissue Sections:A Comparison of Three Stereological Methods
作者单位：Department of Pediatrics University of Minnesota Medical School420 Delaware St．SE MinneapolisMN 55455 U．S．A．
会议名称：《第十一届中国体视学与图像分析学术会议》
会议日期：2006年
学科分类：1001[医学-基础医学(可授医学、理学学位)] 100101[医学-人体解剖与组织胚胎学] 10[医学]
摘 要：Background: Researchers have long been interested in counting the number of cells in tissues. Investigators using different techniques have yielded conflicting results. The most direct method is to count the cells in serial sections from the entire tissue. This Exhaustive Count method is not usually practical. The Disector/Fractionator method counts the number of cells in a fraction of the tissue. The total is estimated from the product of the cell-count and the reciprocal of the tissue fraction. The Weibel-Comez method determines the density of cells per tissue sample, then multiplies this density by the tissue volume to obtain cell number. This study compares the Disector/Fractionator and Weibel-Gomez methods to identify a practical alternative for the time-consuming Exhaustive Count method. Methods: Glomeruli from a mouse kidney were sectioned and images obtained. These images were used to count cell number using the three methods. Results: The Exhaustive Count method yielded a count of 213 ±22 cells/glomerulus. The Disector /Fractionator method resulted in an average of 211 ±29 cells/glomerulus (p =0.82). The Weibel-Gomez method average of 235 ± 26 cells/glomerulus was statistically different from the Exhaustive Count method (p =0.003). Conclusion: The Weibel-Gomez produced an overestimation and the Disector /Fractionator method gave similar results and is a good replacement for the Exhaustive Count method.