Counting renal corpuscles in tissue sections.

Two stereologic methods of counting renal corpuscles in tissue sections were evaluated. Weibel's stereologic method was found to be an accurate and efficient means of determining the number of corpuscles in normal and diseased kidneys. Weibel's method was preferred over the stereologic method of Elias and Hennig because the former is independent of tissue section thickness and is sensitive to variation in corpuscular size. A modification of Weibel's method eliminated the need for an additional point-counting procedure to determine the volumetric fraction of corpuscles in a kidney. The modification made use of previously completed measurements to calculate the area fraction of corpuscles and then substituted this value for the volumetric fraction of renal corpuscles.