Computer-assisted reconstruction of axonal arborizations anterogradely labelled with the Phaseolus vulgaris leucoagglutinin technique

Abstract

This paper describes a computer-assisted method which allows the tracing of axonal arborizations, and the reconstruction in a either grey-scale or a binary image representation, of all labelled neuronal processes located within different focal planes of a single tissue section. The system includes a Nikon microscope connected to a CCD video camera, and a Macintosh microcomputer. Each step of the method is described in order to show that the capturing of images, retouching and pasting are easily and rapidly performed using commercially available hardware and software.