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Thickness measurements of skeletal muscle sections using the light microscope

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A new device is described for improving the accuracy of measuring the thickness of cryostat sections by the focusing technique in the light microscope. The necessity of such measurements is demonstrated by the great variation (range 2.55 μm–11.93 μm) in the thickness of serial cross-sections of frozen muscle biopsies from 12 healthy men. The final dehydration of the sections was found to reduce the thickness of fresh sections by 47%. However, dehydration caused the cross-sectional area to be reduced by only 2.8%.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory for Clinical Physiology of Exercise, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Rigshospitalet, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Jens Halkjaer-Kristensen & Thorsten Ingemann-Hansen

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  1. Jens Halkjaer-Kristensen
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  2. Thorsten Ingemann-Hansen
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Halkjaer-Kristensen, J., Ingemann-Hansen, T. Thickness measurements of skeletal muscle sections using the light microscope. Histochem J 10, 497–504 (1978). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01003132

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01003132

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