Global spatial sampling with isotropic virtual planes: estimators of length density and total length in thick, arbitrarily orientated sections.

Existing design-based direct length estimators require random rotation around at least one axis of the tissue specimen prior to sectioning to ensure isotropy of test probes. In some tissue it is, however, difficult or even impossible to define the region of interest, unless the tissue is sectioned in a specific, nonrandom orientation. Spatial uniform sampling with isotropic virtual planes circumvents the use of physically isotropic or vertical sections. The structure that is contained in a thick physical section is investigated with software-randomized isotropic virtual planes in volume probes in systematically sampled microscope fields using computer-assisted stereological analysis. A fixed volume of 3D space in each uniformly sampled field is probed with systematic random, isotropic virtual planes by a line that moves across the computer screen showing live video images of the microscope field when the test volume is scanned with a focal plane. The intersections between the linear structure and the virtual probes are counted with columns of two dimensional disectors. Global spatial sampling with sets of isotropic uniform random virtual planes provides a basis for length density estimates from a set of parallel physical sections of any orientation preferred by the investigator, i.e. the simplest sampling scheme in stereology. Additional virtues include optimal conditions for reducing the estimator variance, the possibility to estimate total length directly using a fractionator design and the potential to estimate efficiently the distribution of directions from a set of parallel physical sections with arbitrary orientation. Other implementations of the basic idea, systematic uniform sampling using probes that have total 3D x 4pi freedom inside the section, and therefore independent of the position and the orientation of the physical section, are briefly discussed.