Stereology
Stereology (from the Greek stereos 'solid', 'physical') in the original sense of the word is the spatial interpretation of cuts . It deals with the relationship between sections through bodies (and projections) and the bodies themselves. Methods of geometry and statistics , in particular stochastic geometry, are predominantly used .
Stereology as a scientific discipline has only existed since a conference organized by the German-born anatomist and histologist Hans Elias in 1961 with scientists from the fields of biology, geology, engineering and materials science on the Feldberg in the Black Forest . The purpose of this meeting was to find common approaches for the quantification of 3D objects that were based on 2D sections. At that meeting Elias suggested using the term stereology to describe the problem.
The following year, 1962, which was in Vienna International Society for stereology (ISS) ( International Society for Stereology & Image Analysis (ISS)) established. Hans Elias was elected founding president. After Mouton, the ISS is now by far the largest multidisciplinary organization of international scientists that does not pursue a non-warlike purpose.
Stereology finds practical application in materials science , especially in metallography , where a quantitative description of the material is obtained on the basis of etched sections, as well as in histology .
Since it is mostly not possible and necessary to capture the spatial structure exactly, one restricts oneself to expressing some essential properties of the material through parameters . These are obtained by converting characteristic parameters of the flat surface (e.g. the mean area of the individual crystals , frequency of cracks).
Much work in this area is published in the Journal of Microscopy and Image Analysis and Stereology . Both are official organs of the ISS, which today also counts many computer scientists among its members.
literature
- Sarkis A. Saltykov : Stereometric Metallography . VEB German publishing house for basic industry, Leipzig 1974.
- Adrian Baddeley, Eva B. Vedel Jensen: Stereology for Statisticians . Chapman and Hall / CRC, Boca Raton (2004). ISBN 1-58488-405-3 .
- Steven Evans, Ann Marie Janson, Jens Nyengaard: Quantitative methods in neuroscience . Oxford University Press, Oxford (2004). ISBN 0-19-850528-0 .
- John C. Russ, Robert T. DeHoff: Practical stereology . Plenum Press, New York (2000). ISBN 0-306-46476-4 .
- Dietrich Stoyan , Wilfried S. Kendall, Josef Mecke: Stochastic Geometry and Its Applications . 2nd edition, Wiley, Chichester (1995). ISBN 978-0-471-95099-8 .
- Mouton, Peter R .: History of Modern Stereology , IBRO History of Neuroscience (2005), and in a slightly modified version: History of Stereology by Peter R. Mouton, Ph.D.