For markers exhibiting relatively high levels of expression, such as phospho-pRb, only five sections needed to be measured before the variability plateaued, but for a marker exhibiting a lower relative frequency of expression, such as phospho-histone H3, the number of sections required increased to 11.
The number of sections has actually increased from 42,208 in 2008-09 to 44,894 by 2011-12, and a further large research trial of CTOs has all but confirmed their uselessness.
The percentage of research in a course also decreases as the number of sections of a course increases (Spearman rank correlation, r = −0.167, p = 0.0002).
Obviously the reduction in the number of sections would lead to an increase of the variability of the estimated parameters.
The aim is to improve existing identification methods based on known strains at three uniformly distributed sections by increasing the number of sections considered and by distributing them non-uniformly.
For example, more small or micrometastases can be detected by increasing the number of sections.
Increasing the number of sections per scenario would have little effect.
Because a biopsy may include normal conjunctiva in addition to follicles, and granulomas are not uniformly distributed, an increase in the number of sections through different levels at different depths may enhance the probability of detecting granulomas.
To measure the depth of cell adhesions, we counted the number of sections (with at least a three-fold increase in phalloidin or paxillin signal over background) and multiplied this value by the step size between sections.
The optimum number of sections was assumed to be where the graph of CV plotted against the number of sections leveled out, that is, the point beyond which increasing the number of sections did not reduce the variability further.
To estimate the number of sections to analyse in each patient to minimize intrapatient variability, we calculated the difference between the mean values in all sections and those obtained from a 2.5 mm2 randomly selected area from an increasing number of sections.
