Microscopic imaging of hepatic sinusoidal cells: Fifty years in the making

This chapter provides an overview of the various historical and hallmark studies since the early 1970s, in which microscopy played a central role in unlocking numerous structure–function aspects of the liver and the cells it harbors. This time-window coincided with the advent of a new generation of electron microscopes and standardized sample preparation protocols, providing unseen resolution and artifact-free images produced in the hands of anatomists and cell biologists. Descriptive biological microscopy thrived among “liver cell sinusoidologists” ever since, thereby facilitating the disclosure of sinusoidal cell fine structure. Herein, the four major liver sinusoidal cell types will be reviewed, illustrated, and discussed. Furthermore, we will describe the latest microscopy developments and how they will possibly further disclose liver cell ultrastructure in the future. Relevant and illustrative examples are provided of those new contemporary methods of microscopic visualization of cell architecture.