Stereology: a new quantitative morphological method to study epididymal function.

Stereology is a method to obtain quantitative information of structural changes at the light and electron microscopic level. The basic principles of stereology are outlined below. This paper shows how stereologic techniques can be used to obtain structural data from histologic and electron micrographs of intact tissue and cells. A stereologic model, which provides information on the structure of the epididymis has been developed for the rat epididymal head. The model consists of morphologically defined space and membrane compartments of the rat epididymal head and the principal cells. The alterations, induced in the principal cell of the epididymal head after long term hypophysectomy were studied by electron microscopy. The results presented are relative to a cubic centimeter of epididymal tissue, a cubic centimeter of principal cells and principal cell cytoplasm. An attempt to relate stereologic and biochemical data is shown.