Histomorphometrical determination of bone marrow cellularity in iliac crest biopsies.

The point-count principle is an exact method of bone marrow quantitation but fairly good correlation was found between quantitated and estimated values of the cellularity in iliac crest biopsies, although the latter values were significantly lower. No intraspecimen variation was found, but the cellularity in the individual biopsies varied considerably from field to field, indicating that quantitation and estimation on small samples obtained by aspiration may be misleading. The correlation between the values from undecalcified and decalcified sections was high, but decalcification of the biopsies resulted in an underestimation of the amount of haemopoietic tissue.