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Updated: Jul 10, 2026
Reconstruction of 3-Dimensional Histology Volume and its Application to Study Mouse Mammary Glands
Published on: July 26, 2014
Large histological serial sections for computational tissue volume reconstruction
U-D Braumann1, N Scherf, J Einenkel
1University of Leipzig, Translational Centre for Regenerative Medicine, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Philipp-Rosenthal-Strasse 55, 04103 Leipzig, Germany. braumann@uni-leipzig.de
Objectives:
A proof of principle study was conducted for microscopic tissue volume reconstructions using a new image processing chain operating on alternately stained large histological serial sections.
Methods:
Digital histological images were obtained from conventional brightfield transmitted light microscopy. A powerful nonparametric nonlinear optical flow-based registration approach was used. In order to apply a simple but computationally feasible sum-of-squared-differences similarity measure even in case of differing histological stainings, a new consistent tissue segmentation procedure was placed upstream.
Results:
Two reconstructions from uterine cervix carcinoma specimen were accomplished, one alternately stained with p16(INK4a) (surrogate tumor marker) and H&E (routine reference), and another with three different alternate stainings, H&E, p16(INK4a), and CD3 (a T-lymphocyte marker). For both cases, due to our segmentation-based reference-free nonlinear registration procedure, resulting tissue reconstructions exhibit utmost smooth image-to-image transitions without impairing warpings.
Conclusions:
Our combination of modern nonparametric nonlinear registration and consistent tissue segmentation has turned out to provide a superior tissue reconstruction quality.
