Determining the 3-D structure of serial-sectioned microscopic objects: analysis and limitations

The limited aperture of an optical system has the effect of zeroing a biconic portion of the 3-D spectrum of the specimen oriented along the optical axis; elsewhere, the spectrum is distorted by a low-pass function. The planar resolution of the serial sections can be improved by inverse filtering; however, the missing information cannot be recovered directly. In the absence of these effects, the sections can be processed to delineate significant changes in image intensity, or edges. The edges can be aggregated using morphology and other region correction procedures from which a 3-D representation of the specimen can be generated