The majority of funding agencies, journal editors, and regulatory bodies prefer the sound mathematical basis of stereology approaches over assumption- and model-based methods. Biological applications of stereology include the unbiased estimation of a regional volume of tissue, surface area and length of cells and curvilinear fibers, and the total number of cells (objects of interest) in a defined reference space (region of interest).ĭesign-based (unbiased) stereology is the current best practice for quantifying the number of cells in a tissue sample.

Computer based stereology systems acquire data from 3D structures and have been developed to extract an unbiased estimation of geometric properties including length, area, volume, and population size of objects within a biological sample. Unbiased stereology is used to quantify properties of higher dimensional (e.g., 3D) objects using lower dimensional (e.g., 2D) sections of the object. More specifically, the present invention relates to methods and apparatus for determining the characteristics of a tissue sample, including the number and size of cells. The present invention relates to automated stereology methods and apparatuses. The Government has certain rights to the invention. This invention was made with government support MH076541 awarded by the National Institutes of Health.

11, 2016, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety, including any figures, tables, or drawings. This application claims the benefit of U.S.

Stereology system