Ribbon Scanning Confocal Imaging for High-Speed High-Resolution Imaging of Whole Tissues

摘要

In the past decade, there has been a growing interest in imaging whole brains in high- resolution in order to comprehensively map neural pathways across the entire brain. Systems research at this scale has previously not been feasible, but due to technological and methodological advancements, many researchers have embraced this data-intensive, large-scale circuit mapping challenge. Current approaches are limited by speed and/or resolution. In this paper, we describe a novel ribbon scanning confocal approach we use to image serial coronal sections of marmoset tissue. We show that this method surpasses the speed of current confocal approaches by at least ten times while obtaining equivalent subcellular resolution. Additionally, this new method virtually eliminates artifacts created by stitching together field of view tiles, generating a more seamless image. Finally, we go on to discuss broader applications of this technology in the application of chemically cleared whole brains, using data from concurrent experiments.