Abstract Volume
imaging methods are crucial to the understanding of organ function.
No organ is more interconnected in 3 dimensions than the brain, with
a cell
typically having thousands of neighbors. At one extreme are imaging
methods that allow us to map activity in the intact - preferably awake
- brain.
Among those, the only method with sub-cellular 3D resolution is multiphoton
microscopy, which we have extended to imaging depth of close to 1,000
microns and to operation on behaving animals. At the other extreme
are methods,
mostly based on electron microscopy, that provide images at deep sub-micron
resolution. We have recently developed serial block-face scanning electron
microscopy (SBFSEM), which allows the acquisition of intrinsically
aligned volume data at a resolution sufficient to trace thinnest neural
processes
with the goal to completely reconstruct neural circuits. |