Measurement of collagen-fibre diameter in human skin.

A method for the measurement of collagen fibre diameter in human skin is described. Photographic reduction of electron micrograph negatives onto positive transparency film allows the use of a Quantimet 720 image analysis system for relatively rapid determination of mean collagen fibre diameter based upon the mean cross-sectional area of a single electron microscope field. The mean collagen fibre diameter from papillary and reticular dermis in normal skin was 56.2 +/- 2.5 nm and 62.8 +/- 4.3 nm respectively, and exhibited slightly skewed unimodal distributions.