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Updated: Oct 18, 2025

Morphometric Analyses of Retinal Sections
Published on: February 19, 2012
Quantitative Approaches to Study Retinal Neurogenesis
Diego Pérez-Dones1,2, Mario Ledesma-Terrón1,2, David G Míguez1,2
1Centro de Biología Molecular Severo Ochoa, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 28049 Madrid, Spain.
Abstract:
The study of the development of the vertebrate retina can be addressed from several perspectives: from a purely qualitative to a more quantitative approach that takes into account its spatio-temporal features, its three-dimensional structure and also the regulation and properties at the systems level. Here, we review the ongoing transition toward a full four-dimensional characterization of the developing vertebrate retina, focusing on the challenges at the experimental, image acquisition, image processing and quantification. Using the developing zebrafish retina, we illustrate how quantitative data extracted from these type of highly dense, three-dimensional tissues depend strongly on the image quality, image processing and algorithms used to segment and quantify. Therefore, we propose that the scientific community that focuses on developmental systems could strongly benefit from a more detailed disclosure of the tools and pipelines used to process and analyze images from biological samples.

