| contrast stain | <technique> A dye used to colour one portion of a tissue or cell which remained unaffected when the other part was stained by a dye of different colour. Synonym: differential stain. (05 Mar 2000) |
|---|---|
| port-wine stain | <technique> A mark on the skin that resembles port wine (porto) in its rich ruby red colour. Due to an abnormal aggregation of capillaries, a port-wine stain is a type of haemangioma. It occurs on the face as a sign of sturge-weber syndrome. (12 Dec 1998) |
| positive stain | <technique> Direct binding of a dye with a tissue component to produce contrast; in electron microscopy, heavy metals like uranyl and lead salts are used to bind to selective cell constituents to produce increased density to the electron beam, i.e., contrast. (05 Mar 2000) |
| haematoxylin and eosin stain | <technique> Probably the most generally useful of all staining methods for tissues; nuclei are stained a deep blue-black with haematoxylin, and cytoplasm is stained pink after counterstaining with eosin, usually in water. (05 Mar 2000) |
| haematoxylin-malachite green-basic fuchsin stain | <technique> A stain for epoxy resin-extracted sections; semi-thick sections have their plastic dissolved out and the residual tissue is stained sequentially with the various dyes; nuclei and astrocytes are purplish-pink and myelin, lipid droplets, nucleoli, and oligodendrocytes are bright blue-green. (05 Mar 2000) |
| haematoxylin-phloxine B stain | <technique> A stain for intact epoxy sections; semi-thick sections of plastic-embedded tissues have the following structures stained blue to black; chromatin, nucleoli, basophilic cytoplasm, mitochondria, plasma and nuclear membranes, anisotropic myofibrils, mast cell granules, and elastic membranes of blood vessels; appearing pink to red are collagen fibrils, reticulum, goblet cell mucins, hyalin cartilage matrix, stereocilia, cytoplasm, and erythrocytes; fat droplets and perichondrocyte matrix are green. (05 Mar 2000) |
| Hale's colloidal iron stain | <technique> A stain used to distinguish acid mucopolysaccharides such as hyaluronic acid; may be combined with PAS to also visualise carbohydrate-containing proteins and glycoproteins. (05 Mar 2000) |
| half-a-gram stain | <technique> A lab technique used to detect the presence of members from the bacterial family Legionellaceae in samples of sputum. (09 Oct 1997) |
| Heidenhain's azan stain | <technique> A technique using azocarmine B or G followed by aniline blue to stain nuclei and erythrocytes red, muscle orange, glia fibrils reddish, mucin blue, and collagen and reticulum dark blue. Origin: azocarmine + aniline blue (05 Mar 2000) |
| Heidenhain's iron haematoxylin stain | <technique> An iron alum haematoxylin stain used for staining muscle striations and mitotic structures blue-black. (05 Mar 2000) |
| Schaeffer-Fulton stain | <technique> A stain for bacterial spores using malachite green and safranin so that bacterial bodies are red to pink and spores are green. (05 Mar 2000) |
| Schmorl's ferric-ferricyanide reduction stain | <technique> A stain to test for reducing substances in tissues, including melanin, argentaffin granules, thyroid colloid, keratin, keratohyalin, and lipofuscin pigments; ferricyanide is converted into ferrocyanide which is converted to insoluble Prussian blue in the presence of ferric ions. (05 Mar 2000) |
| Schmorl's picrothionin stain | <technique> A stain for compact bone which employs thionin and picric acid solutions to produce blue to blue-black staining of bone canaliculi and cells; bone matrix is yellowish and cartilage ground substance is purple. (05 Mar 2000) |
| Schultz stain | <technique> A stain for cholesterol; a relatively specific but insensitive histochemical test for cholesterol and cholesterol esters in which frozen sections of formalin-fixed tissues are oxidised in iron alum, hydrogen peroxide, or sodium iodate, then treated with sulfuric acid to give a blue-green to red colour in a positive reaction; the presence of glycerol inhibits the reaction. (05 Mar 2000) |
| Prussian blue stain | <technique> A stain employing acid potassium ferrocyanide to demonstrate iron, as in siderocytes. (05 Mar 2000) |