TY - JOUR T1 - There is no rationale to still rely on outdated, biased tools for quantitative morphology in pulmonary research JF - European Respiratory Review JO - EUROPEAN RESPIRATORY REVIEW SP - 105 LP - 106 DO - 10.1183/09059180.00010100 VL - 15 IS - 101 AU - H. Fehrenbach Y1 - 2006/12/01 UR - http://err.ersjournals.com/content/15/101/105.abstract N2 - Pulmonary research was once the scientific area that most significantly contributed to conceptual and methodological progress in the development of quantitative morphology. The pioneering work of Weibel and co-workers [1–5] provided the basis for what is now called design-based stereology. The basic methods of lung fixation, of sampling strategies ensuring that specimens, sections and microscopic fields of view representative of the whole organ (i.e. systematic uniform random samples) are collected, and of designing appropriate test systems for the analysis of volume, surface area and length of a structure of interest, were established during those early days. These tools have successfully been used in pulmonary research to gain insights into important structure–function relationships, aspects of lung development, pulmonary function and pathogenetic mechanisms in lung diseases (see [5–8] for references to original work). The next breakthrough in quantitative morphology came in 1984 when a new stereological tool, the disector (“di-sector” because it consists of two sections a known distance apart), was introduced, which for the first time allowed particle (cell) number and size to be counted without the need for model assumptions about, for example, shape or orientation [9 … ER -