NIO Course - Chapter 2
Basic Histology of the Brain
In this chapter, we discuss basic histology of the brain in order to highlight key similarities and differences between Stimulated Raman Histology (SRH) images captured by the NIO and H&E.
This image is an example of a cerebral cortex taken from a healthy patient treated for epilepsy. The image is displayed at low power to illustrate the general structure and cellularity of normal grey matter. The solid grayed out areas are artifact, representing empty spaces secondary to squash preparation.
These images represent higher power views of the same patient to illustrate features of neurohistology that SRH illustrates with exceptional detail.
Pyramidal cells with prominent nucleoli
Lipofuscin granules
Axons, which appear as white fibers on SRH, are pariticularly prominent due to their high lipid content
Capillaries: Blood vessel architecture is maintained due to minimal manipulation of the tissue being scanned
Glial Cells
Reactive Astrocytes taken from a patient with GBM. The fibrous projections from the astrocytes represent glial processes.
This image shows an example of macrophage infiltration from a patient with a necrotic tumor. On SRH, macrophages appears as clear/white cells with small nuclei and granular, pink cytoplasm. The CH2 (lipid window) highlights these cells which appear bright due to their high lipid content.
SRH (pink/purple)
SRH (CH2 window/greyscale