On the calculation of surface areas of objects reconstructed from serial sections

This paper concerns certain aspects of the calculation of the surface area of objects reconstructed from serial sections. The main points discussed are (1) the relative importance of the number of sections compared to the number of segments taken around the contour in each section; and (2) the fact that the error in the estimated surface area may actually become worse as the number of sections increases. The number of sections should be made large enough to reproduce the three-dimensional shape of the object, but not too much larger; the number of segments around the contours should then be made large enough that the segment size is similar to or smaller than the section thickness.