A morphological and stereological study on calculating volume values of thoracic segments of geese.

BACKGROUND: In this study, the total volume of the thoracic segments of the spinal cord and volume densities of grey matter and white matter were examined by using stereological methods in adult geese having a weight of 3-4 kg. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Ten geese were used as material without sex discrimi- nation. All animals were perfused with 10% formaldehyde. In addition, after perfusion, the geese were kept in 10% formaldehyde for 1 week. Afterwards, thoracic spine was removed and thoracic part of spinal cord was excised. 5 µm thick sections were taken from these tissue samples by microtome. The cross- sectional series were obtained by sampling from each segment at 250th section. Twelve sections were taken from tissue specimens of every segment. The sections were stained by using haematoxylin-eosin and photographed on a microscope. RESULTS: By using the Cavalieri's Principle, the volume densities (volume fractions) of thoracic segments of spinal cord, volume of white matter, and volume of grey matter in segments were calculated. CONCLUSIONS: In the study, total volume of the thoracic segment, volume of white matter, and the volume of grey matter, and the ratio of these volume values to each other were calculated. The SHTEREOM 1.0 software was used for calculating the volume of section specimens.