Quantitative microphotometric studies of Feulgen-stained nuclei on sections of the human uterine cervix: optimization of preparation and measuring technique.

The total extinction of apparently normal intermediate cell nuclei was microphotometrically measured in formalin-fixed Feulgen-stained paraffin sections of the uterine cervix. We investigated whether reproducible microphotometric results can be obtained from a histologic section expected to contain a certain amount of sectioned nuclei and stained by a standard technique. The results have shown that exact reproduction of microphotometrically measured mean total extinction values of intermediate cell nuclei can be achieved with a threshold value of 90% transmission in 10 microns sections.