title: Thickness measurements of skeletal muscle sections using the light microscope.
abstract: A new device is described for improving the accuracy of measuring the thickness of cryostat sections by the focusing technique in the light microscope. The necessity of such measurements is demonstrated by the great variation (range 2.55 micrometer--11.93 micrometer) in the thickness of serial cross-sections of frozen muscle biopsies from 12 healthy men. The final dehydration of the sections was found to reduce the thickenss of fresh sections by 47%. However, dehydration caused the cross-sectional area to be reduced by only 2.8%.
mesh_terms: D000251:Adenosine Triphosphatases / Q000032:analysis; D000328:Adult; D005629:Frozen Sections; D005993:Glycerolphosphate Dehydrogenase / Q000032:analysis; D006651:Histocytochemistry; D006801:Humans; D007866:Leg; D008297:Male; D008853:Microscopy / Q000295:instrumentation*; D008867:Microtomy; D009132:Muscles / Q000201:enzymology*; D009210:Myofibrils / Q000201:enzymology; D009246:NADH Tetrazolium Reductase / Q000032:analysis; D010503:Periodic Acid-Schiff Reaction
chemical_list: D005993:Glycerolphosphate Dehydrogenase; D009246:NADH Tetrazolium Reductase; D000251:Adenosine Triphosphatases