BrainFilm, a novel technique for physical compression of 3D brain slices for efficient image acquisition and post-processing

Joo Yeon Kim, Hyun Jung Kim, Min Jee Jang, June Hoan Kim, Ju Hyun Lee, Eunsoo Lee, Kyerl Park, Hyuncheol Kim, Jaedong Lee, Jeehyun Kwag, Namhee Kim, Mi Ryoung Song, Hyun Kim, Woong Sun

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    6 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Tissue clearing enables us to observe thick tissue at a single cell resolution by reducing light scattering and refractive index matching. However, imaging of a large volume of tissue for 3D reconstruction requires a great deal of time, cost, and efforts. Few methods have been developed to transcend these limitations by mechanical compression or isotropic tissue shrinkage. Tissue shrinkage significantly lessens the imaging burden; however, there is an inevitable trade-off with image resolution. Here, we have developed the "BrainFilm" technique to compress cleared tissue at Z-axis by dehydration, without alteration of the XY-axis. The Z-axis compression was approximately 90%, and resulted in substantial reduction in image acquisition time and data size. The BrainFilm technique was successfully used to trace and characterize the morphology of thick biocytin-labelled neurons following electrophysiological recording and trace the GFP-labelled long nerve projections in irregular tissues such as the limb of mouse embryo. Thus, BrainFilm is a versatile tool that can be applied in diverse studies of 3D tissues in which spatial information of the Z-axis is dispensable.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article number8531
    JournalScientific reports
    Volume8
    Issue number1
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2018 Dec 1

    Bibliographical note

    Funding Information:
    We thank Jung Youn Choi and Boram Lee for technical assistance. This work was supported by the Brain Research Program through the National Research Foundation (NRF) funded by the Korean Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (NRF-2015M3C7A1028790) and by the Ministry of Education (NRF-2016R1D1A1A02937581).

    Publisher Copyright:
    © 2018 The Author(s).

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • General

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