title: Fluorescence imaging of dendritic spines of Golgi-Cox-stained neurons using brightening background.
abstract: We report a novel fluorescence imaging approach to imaging nonfluorescence-labeled biological tissue samples. The method was demonstrated by imaging neurons in Golgi-Cox-stained and epoxy-resin-embedded samples through the excitation of the background fluorescence of the specimens. The dark neurons stood out clearly against background fluorescence in the images, enabling the tracing of a single dendritic spine using both confocal and wide-field fluorescence microscopy. The results suggest that the reported fluorescence imaging method would provide an effective alternative solution to image nonfluorescence-labeled samples, and it allows tracing the dendritic spine structure of neurons.
authors.affiliation: Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Britton Chance Center for Biomedical Photonics, Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Wuhan 430074, ChinabHuazhong University of Science and Technology, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Key Labo.
authors.forename: Min
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ai
authors.affiliation: Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Britton Chance Center for Biomedical Photonics, Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Wuhan 430074, ChinabHuazhong University of Science and Technology, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Key Labo.
authors.forename: Hanqing
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Xiong
authors.affiliation: Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Britton Chance Center for Biomedical Photonics, Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Wuhan 430074, ChinabHuazhong University of Science and Technology, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Key Labo.
authors.forename: Tao
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Britton Chance Center for Biomedical Photonics, Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Wuhan 430074, ChinabHuazhong University of Science and Technology, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Key Labo.
authors.forename: Zhenhua
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Shang
authors.affiliation: Hubei University of Education, School of Physics and Electronic Information, Wuhan 430205, China.
authors.forename: Muqing
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Britton Chance Center for Biomedical Photonics, Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Wuhan 430074, ChinabHuazhong University of Science and Technology, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Key Labo.
authors.forename: Xiuli
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Britton Chance Center for Biomedical Photonics, Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Wuhan 430074, ChinabHuazhong University of Science and Technology, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Key Labo.
authors.forename: Shaoqun
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zeng
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D049229:Dendritic Spines / Q000737:chemistry*; D005456:Fluorescent Dyes / Q000737:chemistry*; D008297:Male; D051379:Mice; D018613:Microscopy, Confocal; D008856:Microscopy, Fluorescence / Q000379:methods*; D017966:Pyramidal Cells / Q000737:chemistry / Q000166:cytology*
chemical_list: D005456:Fluorescent Dyes