Global Trends in Application of Stereology as a Quantitative Tool in Biomedical Research

Abstract

Stereology is a quantitative and comparative method that utilizes planes, lines, and points for the estimation of three-dimensional parameters in morphological studies. It primarily focuses on geometrical features of objects such as number, density, length, area, and volume. A scientometric study was conducted to analyze global research trends in application of stereology in biomedical research. Stereology has gained wide application resulting into design-based stereological methods. Data for this study were retrieved from the SCOPUS database. At least 5,732 publications employing stereology as analytical tool were produced in a period of 50 years between 1966 and 2016. Half (2,858; 49.87%) of these publications were produced in the last 12 years from 2005 to 2016. The relative growth rate (RGR) of publications decreased from 1967 (0.69) to 2016 (0.03) whereas the doubling time (DT) increased from 1.00 to 20.56 in the same period. A great majority (5,332; 93.02%) of the publications retrieved from SCOPUS were journal articles in various biomedical fields. The Journal of Microscopy tops the list of journals with at least 205 articles. The most productive country was USA with at least 1663 (23.10%) publications and Aarhus Universitet tops the list of institutions with at least 306 publications. J.R. Nyengaard was the most prolific author who contributed at least 125 publications. The highly cited article had a total of 2,054 citations with an average of over 82 citations per year. Given the growing importance of stereology in biomedical research, it is necessary to promote its application among scholars.

Stereological study of organelle distribution in human oocytes at metaphase I

“…The number of publications regarding the application of stereology as quantitative tool in biomedical research has largely increased in the last fifty years (Kipanyula and Sife, 2018). Recent articles have shown the use of a stereological approach in studies related to Alzheimer's disease (Furcila et al, 2019), Huntington's disease (Paldino et al, 2019) and Parkinson's disease (Kim et al, 2020), as well as to quantify the total number of white matter interstitial neurons in the human brain (Sedmak and Judas, 2019), to name only a few.…”

Nanoparticle delivery system, highly active antiretroviral therapy, and testicular morphology: The role of stereology

“…It is a combination of quantitative and comparative approaches that utilize lines, points, numbers, length, area, volume, and planes to evaluate three-dimensional indices. 250,251 This method has been widely employed in neuro research, 250,252 quantifying the microarchitecture of the kidney. 253,254 Stereology has been employed to quantify the liver macrophages and hepatocytes, [254][255][256] also to assess the human lung pathologies 257 as well as testicular morphological and morphometric parameters.…”

“…Stereology has been widely applied in morphological and morphometric research. It is a combination of quantitative and comparative approaches that utilize lines, points, numbers, length, area, volume, and planes to evaluate three‐dimensional indices 250,251 …”

Dry Sliding Wear and Surface Morphological Examination of an Aluminium Matrix Composite Reinforced With Palm Kernel Shell

“…ImageJ software package was used for image processing and image analyses. This automatic image analysing software is capable of defining and counting object in the picture, analysing their surface, length, boundaries, moments, quantifying of grains and measurement of grain sizes, the volume fraction of phase and depositing the results of analyses to spreadsheet data files [18]. The following procedures with detailed description given in [22,23,37,38] were applied in conducting the ImageJ analysis: firstly, the surface morphology of the composites and the unreinforced aluminium alloy samples was captured by an optical microscope and exported as a high-resolution micrograph.…”

“…Quantitative analysis of materials' microstructural features can be achieved using image analysis software. Either optical or scanning electron microscope micrographs can be used during image analysis [17,18]. More commercial software programs, such as Amira, Comsol multiphysics, imageJ, etc., are available for the analysis of microstructural features of engineering materials [19,20].…”