A colleague (Hossler, F, East Tennessee State Med. Sch.) and I have
used a method called corrosion casting to study the rich capillary bed
underlying the trasitional epithelium of the urinary bladder.  We used a
modified commercial preparation "MERCOX Blue" for the preparation.  The blue
dye is, fortuitously, fluorescent.
	In a report given at the recent Philadelphia meeting of Microscope
Society of America (Microscopy and Analysis, Vol6, Suppl 2, pp562-563),
Czymmek et al. described the use of confocal microscopy in an analysis of
corrosion casts.  They used a Zeiss LSM 510 confocal (exciting the dye with
the HeNe(Red) laser (633nm)) and detecting via a 660nm longpass emission
filter.  I have repeated this on an Olympus FV-300 using both the HeNe(R) as
above with casts of pig bladder wall prepared by one of the above authors
(Hossler).  
	I have a particularly useful z-projection of a large, low power,
image stack that I would be willing to send to requestors (69k, jpg) as an
example of what can be accomplished with the application of confocal
microscopy applied to low-power microanatomic studies of fluorescent
objects.
	I have recommended the use of Evans Blue (C.I. 23860, CAS #
314-13-6) on several occasions in the past but have seen no results.  This
dye is known to form covalent bonds with albumin stoichimetrically and to be
fluorescent in THAT form.  It has been used in studies of extravasation
around injury sites as well as for vascular volume studies.  There is one
reported incident of complicity in animal carcinogenesis (bolus, i.p. in
rats) mentioned by IPCS INCHEM
(http://www.inchem.org/documents/iarc/iarc/iarc121.htm).

Hope this is of some use.

Fred Monson


Frederick C. Monson, PhD                                    
Center for Advanced Scientific Imaging(CASI)           
West Chester University of Pennsylvania                    
Schmucker Science Center II 
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