Identification of cellular and subcellular features by means of digital microscopy

This paper presents two examples of the application of quantitative digital microscopy to two different fields of biological analysis: DNA content determination in microstructures and the study of the behaviour of microorganisms. In both cases the application of segmentation and labelling procedures was found to be essential in order to obtain the desired results, because it made it possible to overcome the measurement limits of traditional instrumentation and to obviate drawbacks normally present when analysis is placed in the hands of the human operator.