stereology

[ster-ee-ol-uh-jee, steer-]

noun

1. a branch of science dealing with the determination of the three-dimensional structure of objects based on two-dimensional views of them.

Word History and Origins

Origin of stereology¹

First recorded in 1960–65; stereo- + -logy

Example Sentences

For decades, the standard method for counting brain cells was stereology: slicing up the brain, tallying cells in thin sheets of tissue splayed on microscope slides and multiplying those numbers by the volume of the relevant region to get an estimate.

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Using stereology to take a census of the human brain would require a daunting amount of time, resources and unerring precision.

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Stereology is a laborious technique that works well for small, relatively uniform areas of the brain.

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In a study from the 1970s, Herculano-Houzel discovered a curious proposal for an alternative to stereology: Why not measure the total amount of DNA in a brain and divide by the average amount of DNA per cell?

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But many species have brains that are simply too big, convoluted and multitudinous to yield to stereology.

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