The quantitation of the rat gastric mucosa by morphometric methods

Cell and tissue components are three-dimensional objects which are usually studied on thin sections, where they appear as two-dimensional profiles. Stereological methods, which permit an extrapolation from two- to three-dimensional space, are useful to quantify biological structures. After briefly reviewing the fundamental principles of stereology, their practical application as point-, intersection- and particle-counting is explained and illustrated on the gastric mucosa. To facilitate stereologic studies, an analytic model of gastric mucosa is presented. Finally, some data on the quantitative composition of different parts of the rat gastric mucosa as well as the mean volume and number of different gastric epithelial cells are presented.