NOBIC would like to invite you to an in-person talk on:
Tuesday, August 1st, 2023, 10 AM
at
SBS CR 1 (SBS 01n 33) , NTU
60 Nanyang Drive, Singapore 637551
ULTRA LIGHTSHEET MACRO PHOTOGRAPHY FOR ITERATIVELY EXPANDED DROSOPHILA CONNECTOME
PROF KAO FU JEN
Institute of Biophotonics , National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan
Abstract
The initiative in imaging a hugely expanded Drosophila brain via iterative expansion microscopy (ExM) will be discussed. Through ExM, 100X expansion of Drosophila brain has been demonstrated by enlarging the typically 0.6×0.3×0.2 mm sized brain to 60x30x20 mm, promising electron microscopy-like resolution (~3 nm) with optical microscopy (~300 nm) to resolve the synapse connection.
The rapid and ultra-large-scale imaging of large tissue samples will revolutionize our understanding of the relationship between biological function and structure. Currently, commercially available imaging platforms, such as SmartSPIM, can acquire images with more than 100 million pixels at a data throughput rate of several GB per second (acquisition rate ~0.417 mm3 /s with a 4X lens). Taking the 100X expanded Drosophila brain as an example, its volume is approximately 15,000 mm3, and the expected 3D scanning is estimated to be approximately 36,000 seconds (~10 hours). As a comparison, the imaging speed of a spinning disk confocal microscope is only ~0.0058mm3 /s with a 10X lens, making it very challenging to image the whole 100X expanded brain.
We estimate that our ultra Lightsheet-based macro photography platform can achieve a 3D image rate of ~4 mm3/s with a 2X lens, an order of magnitude faster than SmartSPIM.
