Eur J Anat, 12 (1): 51-55 (2008)

Staining body slices before and after plastination

Steinke H., Rabi S., Saito T.

Institut für Anatomie, Universität Leipzig, Liebigstr. 13, 04103 Leipzig, Germany; Department of Anatomy, Christian Medical College, Vellore, India; Department of Anatomy, Nippon Medical School, Tokyo, Japan

ABSTRACT A newly developed staining technique of body slices is helpful because of the difficulty in differentiating the various structures such as ligaments, connective tissue, muscle etc, especially in thin slices, which allows comparison with high resolution MRI. In this study, both already plastinated slices and slices to be plastinated were stained. The already plastinated slices were first ground, and then stained. After staining, the bone stained pink; muscles - green; cartilage - violet; connective tissue - blue-violet. Conversely, native sawn slices were first stained and then plastinated with E12/E1 using the advanced slice plastination technique, providing the first possibility to obtain stained plastinates made by slice plastination. They are below 1 mm thin and can be made from any part in the body. In these slices, the skin, ligaments and connective tissue stained reddish pink and the bone marrow - green, while the muscles remained brownish. The method of staining native body slices with subsequent plastination is simple and rapid and affords a better differentiation of structures.

Keywords: analytic method, article, body slice, connective tissue, high resolution computer tomography, human, intermethod comparison, ligament, muscle tissue, plastination, staining, structure analysis