To determine the efficiency of methods of quantitation of the volume density of components within kidney biopsies, techniques involving a semi-automatic digitizing tablet and stereological point counting were compared.Volume density (Vv) is a parameter reflecting the volume of a component to the volume that contains the component, e.g., the fraction of cell volume that is made up of mitochondrial volume. The units of Vv are μm3 /μm3.Kidney biopsies from 15 patients were used. Five were donor biopsies performed at the time of kidney transplantation (patients 1-5, TABLE 1) and were considered normal kidney tissue. The remaining biopsies were obtained from diabetic patients with a spectrum of diabetic kidney lesions. The biopsy specimens were fixed and embedded according to routine electron microscogy protocols. Three glomeruli from each patient were selected randomly for electron microscopy. An average of 12 unbiased and systematic micrographs were obtained from each glomerulus and printed at a final magnification of x18,000.