Connective tissue is narrowly defined as the three types of fibers it contains: collagen fibers, reticular fibers, and elastic fibers. Elastic fibers (Elastic Fiber) are mainly distributed in the arterial wall, alveolar wall, and skin of the human body, and are yellow and refractive when fresh.

Elastic fiber staining can show the changes of elastic fibers in skin tissues, such as elastic fiber nevus, skin ring granuloma, hardness disease, etc.; display and determination of endocardial and arterial lesions, observation of certain lesions whether accompanied by elastic fibers hyperplasia or destruction; but also identify the tumor tissue components, such as elastic fibrous tumors, elastic fibers stained by the elastic fibers, elastic fibers in the tumor body can be clearly seen ball. Commonly used elastic fiber staining methods include Gomori aldehyde magenta method, resorcinol alkaline magenta method, lichen red method, Victoria blue method, iron iodine hematoxylin method and so on.