title: Quantitative microscopy of the lung: a problem-based approach. Part 2: stereological parameters and study designs in various diseases of the respiratory tract.
abstract: Design-based stereology provides efficient methods to obtain valuable quantitative information of the respiratory tract in various diseases. However, the choice of the most relevant parameters in a specific disease setting has to be deduced from the present pathobiological knowledge. Often it is difficult to express the pathological alterations by interpretable parameters in terms of volume, surface area, length, or number. In the second part of this companion review article, we analyze the present pathophysiological knowledge about acute lung injury, diffuse parenchymal lung diseases, emphysema, pulmonary hypertension, and asthma to come up with recommendations for the disease-specific application of stereological principles for obtaining relevant parameters. Worked examples with illustrative images are used to demonstrate the work flow, estimation procedure, and calculation and to facilitate the practical performance of equivalent analyses.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Functional and Applied Anatomy, Hannover Medical School, Carl-Neuberg-Str. 1, 30625 Hannover, Germany. muehlfeld.christian@mh-hannover.de
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Mühlfeld
authors.forename: Matthias
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ochs
mesh_terms: D055371:Acute Lung Injury / Q000473:pathology; D056151:Airway Remodeling; D000818:Animals; D001249:Asthma / Q000473:pathology; D004646:Emphysema / Q000473:pathology; D006801:Humans; D006976:Hypertension, Pulmonary / Q000473:pathology; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional / Q000379:methods*; D008168:Lung / Q000166:cytology / Q000473:pathology*; D008171:Lung Diseases / Q000473:pathology*; D051379:Mice; D008853:Microscopy / Q000379:methods*; D051381:Rats
keywords: acute lung injury; asthma; design-based stereology; diffuse parenchymal lung disease; emphysema; pulmonary hypertension