DIAGNOSTIC ELECTRON MICROSCOPY

SUDA RIENGROJPITAK and SOMPHONG SAHAPHONG

ABSTRACT: Electron microscopy has become established as a useful diagnostic tool in pathology. Diagnostic electron microscopy refers to the utilization of electron microscopy and its associated methods in all of their ramifications for the study of human disease as well as animal disease. At the present time, electron microscopy provides crucial diagnostic information and also infonnation of confinnatory nature of great educational value to pathologist and clinician. Pathologist relies increasingly on the electron microscope as an aid in the morphologic diagnosis of disease.

The field of diagnostic electron microscopy is closely associated with the field of cellular pathobiology. The power of concepts derived from cellular pathobiology and applied to human disease biology cannot be overestimated. Information derived on one especially suitable cell type can be rapidly applied, with a minimum of experimentation, to other cell types and other organisms leading to much more rapid progression of knowledge. An important concept in this renaissance of general pathology is the correlation between structure and function at the cellular level, which has been made observable through the integration of methods in the fields of microscopy, immunology, biochemistry and physiology. The electron microscope is, of course, a fundamental tool in those investigations because it is at the level of resolution provided by this instrument that most structural correlations with function and metabolism are visible.

Magnification has always fascinated the probing mind of man. Galileo Galilei was the first who developed the means of achieving it. Since then, improvements in the field of optics have brought us to the limits of resolution in light microscopy. Ruska conceived the first electron microscope in 1930. The evolution of his ideas has led to the development of the complex and sophisticated electron microscopes available today. These include scanning, high voltage, electron microprobe and X-ray analysis electron microscopes. It is now possible to identify individual molecules or individual constituents

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Laboratory of Cellular Pathobiology. Department of Pathobiology. Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, Bangkok 10400, Thailand