ABSTRACT
Hypertensive Rats ...................................................................................... 345 17.6 Voxel Representation ............................................................................................................ 347
17.6.1 Preprocessing ............................................................................................................ 347 17.6.2 Rendering of 3-D Images ......................................................................................... 349
17.7 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 351 References ...................................................................................................................................... 351
The serial section reconstruction technique has been utilized for a long time as a basic method in biological fields in which, in the old-fashioned way, a model is built by stacking materials like balsa wood sheets or plastic plates cut along contour lines of objects. Thus, the object is reconstructed from section images. Since the 1970s, computer processing and graphics were introduced to assist in this work. 1-30 Subsequently, commercial image processors, including systems based on personal computers and software packages, provided for reconstruction, although investigators sometimes regarded these as insufficient, depending on the level of their research work.3 Furthermore, with improvements in the quality of online image detectors, even in electron microscopy, a
total reconstruction system including an electron microscope for online image acquisition was developedY Computer-aided techniques have become more convenient for investigators,32-41 although the preparation of serial sections and their images remains cumbersome.
