Pathogenicity criteria allow the classification of variants from benign to pathogenic. One of the major pathogenicity criteria is a good correlation of heteroplasmic level with tissue or cellular involvement. Indeed, mtDNA mutations are generally heteroplasmic, which corresponds to the coexistence of normal and mutated molecules in the same cell or tissue, the most affected tissues having a high rate of mutation. On a muscle biopsy of an affected patient, the fibers often present an enzyme deficiency in cytochrome c oxidase (COX-negative) which can be demonstrated in immunohistochemistry. The single fiber study allows to isolate the deficient fibers and to quantify the heteroplasmic rate of a variant. The presence of a high level of heteroplasm in the COX-negative fibers, unlike fibers without deficit, is a strong argument in favor of the pathogenicity of this variant. Currently, this technique is not used routinely in diagnostic laboratories but only occasionally in a research framework in some laboratories. It is a heavy technique that consists of a first stage of laser microdissection of the various muscle fibers followed by a second step of quantification of the variant from each fiber. This second step requires a specific focus for each identified variant.