title: Improved detectability of neuronal connectivity on mechanical sectioning setup by using confocal detection.
abstract: A recently reported micro-optical sectioning tomography system has great potential to draw the neuronal circuits of large brain volume with submicron resolution by combining fine mechanic sectioning with simultaneous optical imaging. However, sectioning the fluorescence sample sometimes induces tears between adjacent tiles and causes difficulties in continuous fiber tracing from fluorescence imaging. A confocal detection to recover the interruptions of the nerve fiber is introduced. With a 50-μm-width confocal slit, the signal-to-background ratio is increased 16- to 49-fold more than that without the slit, which effectively improves the detectability of the signal in the interruptions and enables continuous tracing of the neuronal circuits.
authors.affiliation: Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Britton Chance Center for Biomedical Photonics, Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, 1037 Luoyu Road, Wuhan 430074, China.
authors.forename: Xiaoli
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Qi
authors.forename: Hanqing
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Xiong
authors.forename: Xiaohua
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Lv
authors.forename: Jianling
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Hui
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Gong
authors.forename: Qingming
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Luo
authors.forename: Shaoqun
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zeng
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001931:Brain Mapping / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D006652:Histological Techniques / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D051379:Mice; D008822:Mice, Transgenic; D018613:Microscopy, Confocal / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D009412:Nerve Fibers / Q000502:physiology / Q000648:ultrastructure; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology*; D013050:Spectrometry, Fluorescence; D041622:Tomography, Optical