Staining and relative determination of elemental contents by the laser microprobe.

An improved laser microprobe procedure is developed and applied to the measurement of calcium content in microareas of right and left subepicardial muscles. The staining of canine cardiac muscles by Methylene Blue solution (1% w/v) was found to improve sampling efficiency. Elemental content is proportional to T-1/gamma, where T is the transmittance of the characteristic emission line of the element of the photographic plate and gamma is its contrast. In the present system, the calcium content is analyzed using T-3.2. We find that the staining of samples and the determination of T-1/gamma are useful procedures in the application of laser microprobe to the study of elemental content in biologic microareas.