Schneider Jan Philipp, Ochs Matthias
Institute of Functional and Applied Anatomy Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany.
Methods Cell Biol. 2013;113:257-94. doi: 10.1016/B978-0-12-407239-8.00012-4.
Many scientific projects require a quantitative assessment of organ, tissue and cell (ultra)structure. Such quantitative (morphometric) data are essential to make statistically valid comparisons between experimental groups. The structures of interest are measured at different microscopic levels. However, measurements in microscopy pose two problems: 1) Only a small fraction of the whole biological system can be analyzed (sampling problem). 2) The analysis is performed on nearly two-dimensional (physical, optical or virtual) sections through the object although the aim is to obtain biologically meaningful three-dimensional data (3D vs 2D problem). These problems are solved by the application of unbiased sampling and measurement tools known as stereology. This chapter gives a brief introduction to the theory and practical application of stereology, using the lung as an example. Stereological tools needed to quantify volume, number and surface area are introduced and examples are given how to estimate total lung volume, volume of lung parenchyma, alveolar surface area and number of alveolar epithelial type II cells per lung.
许多科研项目需要对器官、组织和细胞的（超）结构进行定量评估。此类定量（形态计量学）数据对于在实验组之间进行具有统计学效力的比较至关重要。感兴趣的结构在不同的微观层面进行测量。然而，显微镜测量存在两个问题：1）只能分析整个生物系统的一小部分（抽样问题）。2）尽管目的是获取具有生物学意义的三维数据，但分析是在通过该物体的近乎二维（物理、光学或虚拟）切片上进行的（三维与二维问题）。这些问题通过应用称为体视学的无偏抽样和测量工具得以解决。本章以肺为例，简要介绍体视学的理论和实际应用。介绍了量化体积、数量和表面积所需的体视学工具，并给出了如何估计全肺总体积、肺实质体积、肺泡表面积以及每侧肺的肺泡Ⅱ型上皮细胞数量的示例。
