Objective
This study investigated the reliability of two common strategies for assessing peripheral nerve characteristics during healthy and disease/injury states – design-based stereology using light or electron microscopy, and semi-automated binary imaging histomorphometry.
Conclusion
Both stereology and histomorphometry accurately quantified myelinated axon counts in rats, but stereology using light microscopy overestimated axon and fiber size compared to the other assessed methods. These data indicate that histomorphometry has potential advantages for the assessment of healthy nerve over stereology when stereology is limited to light microscopy alone.