title: A beginner's guide to tissue clearing.
abstract: The last decade has seen a proliferation of tissue clearing methods that render large biological samples transparent and allow unprecedented three-dimensional views of enormous volumes of tissue. For a scientist wondering whether these methods will be useful to address their research problems, it can be bewildering to sort through the ever-increasing number of papers introducing new clearing methods. Here, I provide a concise summary for the novice describing what tissue clearing is, which research problems it can be applied to, how to decide on a clearing method, and where the field is headed in the future.
authors.affiliation: Microscopy Services Laboratory, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, United States. Electronic address: pablo_ariel@med.unc.edu.
authors.forename: Pablo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Ariel
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D006652:Histological Techniques / Q000379:methods* / Q000639:trends; D020100:Hydrogels; D012996:Solutions; D012997:Solvents; D013194:Staining and Labeling / Q000379:methods; D016610:Tissue Embedding / Q000379:methods
chemical_list: D020100:Hydrogels; D012996:Solutions; D012997:Solvents
keywords: Optical clearing; Organoids; Tissue clearing; Whole organ imaging; Whole organism imaging