#Volume fraction stereology software
In point counting stereology an image from your microscope is projected onto a computer screen and your microscope control program and/or special imaging software projects a uniform grid over this image. There are many types of stereology, but on this page I highlight one of the most common and easy forms of stereology: " point counting stereology". I've written this page to show just how quick and easy stereology can be. and yet I've noticed that many are not! Due to its rapid nature (one day of counting is often enough to generate an entire table of results), and the fact that stereology can be done live on a microscope (no saving or storing of images required), or using existing 2D and/or 3D images of cells (images which have already been collected), I believe stereology is a brilliant compliment to slower methods of 3D analysis, such as the use of transmission electron tomography and scanning electron tomography to acquire 3D images. As such, I believe all cell biologists should be familiar and experienced with this technique. In the fields of cell biology and electron microscopy, stereology allows scientists to estimate the volume, surface area, number and the size of cellular compartments by looking at a relatively small number of 2D slices and, unlike 3D reconstruction and segmentation (methods which are notoriously slow) it allows scientists to attain these estimates very very fast. The 3D volume of any object can be determined from the 2D areas of its planar sections. Put another way, stereology exploits the fact that many 3D quantities can be determined without 3D reconstruction. To achieve this, stereology uses a random sampling and systematic approach to provide unbiased quantitative data. Stereology - " the spatial interpretation of sections" - is a technique for 3D interpretation of (2D) planar sections of materials or tissues.