title: Stereological estimation of volume ratios by systematic sections.
abstract: Two related problems are explored. Firstly, a single opaque solid omega 2, is considered. The problem is to estimate the minimum number of systematic sections m, necessary to estimate the volume ratio v = V (omega 2)/V (omega 1) with a coefficient of error or at most gamma 0 with a probability 1 - alpha. Secondly, we consider a population of such specimens. The second problem is to estimate the optimum number of n of specimens to be sampled and the number n of systematic sections per specimen in order to estimate the mean volume ratio v of the population with a relative error of at most epsilon 0 with a probability 1 - alpha. General guidelines for solving the two problems are presented. Practical results applicable to two populations of mouse and guinea-pid lymph nodes, exhibiting a wide variation in size and shape, are obtained.
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D006168:Guinea Pigs; D006652:Histological Techniques; D008198:Lymph Nodes / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D008433:Mathematics; D051379:Mice; D013223:Statistics as Topic