Serial Block-face Scanning Electron Microscopy (SBF-SEM or 3D-EM) is a powerful tool to study biological structure in ultrastructural level. Quantification of cellular ultrastructure is useful to providing biological information. This technique requires not only high quality of tissue fixation and ideal sample embedding to preserve structures, but also delicate 3D image scanning and post-processing of images. We have adapted previous method to optimize the EM technique to detect and study cellular ultrastructure. Here we present the method to embed samples for 3D-EM technique and to quantify the morphological parameters of nucleus and mitochondria.
Lu, H., Ohno, N. and Ransohoff, R. M. (2015). Morphological Quantification of Nuclei and Mitochondria in Serial Block-face Scanning Electron Microscopy Images. Bio-protocol 5(18): e1593. DOI: 10.21769/BioProtoc.1593.