Robert L. Sorenson

Ph.D. University of Minnesota, 1967

One of my strategies for teaching is to identify areas where students have problems and develop methods and tools to overcome these issues. For the Human Histology Course I developed a complete set of previews for the Histology Laboratories and a corresponding Atlas of Human Histology. The previews and atlas are unique to our collection of tissue specimens. That is, the atlas is based on the exact same slides that the students study and the images in the atlas show the specimens at several levels of magnification - exactly the way one examines specimens through a microscope. In this way the atlas guides the students as if they are working one on one with an instructor.

We are fortunate to have an unusually excellent collection of teaching slides that was developed by Dr. Anna Mary Carpenter. I selected the best individual specimens for high resolution digitization. These specimens can now be viewed on-line and in much the same way that one would examine a slide through the microscope. That is, the specimen can be examined at various levels of magnification on a computer screen in the same way that one would examine these slides with a microscope. With the atlas that corresponds to these slides, one can study histology on the computer monitor just as if one were using a microscope.

Download the sample chapters, Chapter 1 - Introduction and Chapter 14 - Gastrointestinal Tract, from the "Atlas of Human Histology: A Guide to Microscopic Structure of Cells, Tissues and Organs" by Robert L. Sorenson. The printed atlas is available from the University of Minnesota Book Store and is the atlas for use with the Virtual Histology Collection of Slides.

Robert L. Sorenson, University of Minnesota, Department of Genetics, Cell Biology and Development, Minneapolis, MN, USA.