Abstract: In general, the invention consists of a means for staining a sample with a fluorescent dye, a means for producing a darkfield image of the fluorescent stained sample, and a means of transforming an image of a sample stained with one or more darkfield dyes into an image stained with one or more brightfield dyes for examination on a computer monitor. The process includes applying a digital lookup table or other computational means in order to convert the darkfield data to brightfield forms, and a means of displaying said transformed information. Preferably, the imaging means is a block face microscope, and the means for transforming the images is a digital computer.