Kyoto Collection in The Anatomical Record

Human embryology began at the end of the 19th century and has developed using valuable human embryo specimens; the Carnegie and Blechshmidt Collections are famous examples. Although established after these two collections, the Kyoto Collection of Human Embryos and Fetuses has become the largest collection worldwide, and its major asset is 1044 serial tissue sections comprising 547 normal and 497 abnormal cases. Morphological changes have been the focus of analysis owing to the absence of fresh embryos in the Kyoto Collection. Furthermore, analysis methods have undergone significant changes. For example, morphometrics has been used to quantitatively analyze shape changes, although it may result in the loss of information on shape changes, which can hinder the visualization of analysis results. However, geometric morphometrics has been recently introduced to the fetal and embryonic stages to circumvent this problem. With the development of DNA analysis kits, several hundred DNA base pairs have been extracted from the Kyoto Collection of studies conducted from the 2000s to the 2010s through genetic analysis. Future technological advances are eagerly awaited.