STEREOLOGY: A HISTORICAL SURVEY

Abstract

Stereology is the science of geometric sampling, with applications to the statistical analysis of microstructures in biology and materials science. Subsidiary disciplines are image analysis, quantitative microscopy, and radiology. This survey is organized chronologically within a series of topics which cover most aspects of stereology. Each topic is described informally to make it accessible to scientists of different disciplines.

Keywords

• anisotropy
• connectivity
• efficiency
• global stereology
• local stereology
• particle counting and sizing
• second order stereology
• size and orientation distributions