[The study of cerebral astrocyte spatial organization using confocal laser microscopy]

Three-dimensional reconstruction of cytoarchitectonic relations of the main components of the nervous tissue appears to be an important, yet an extremely laborious task of neuromorphology. The aims of the present study were: to develop the method permitting accurate visualization of astrocytes in rat brain slices thicker then 30 microm, to create an adequate algorithm for the study of the slides received using a confocal microscope and to perform the three-dimensional reconstructions of astrocytes from Z-series of confocal images. Different variants of slide preparation (various clearing reagents, fluorochromes, mounting media) were investigated, together with the operating modes of confocal microscope, methods of digital image processing etc. The methodical approaches are recommended that may be successfully applied for three-dimensional reconstruction and detection of spatial relations of astrocytes in mammalian brain.