Abstract
Elucidating connectivity and functionality at the whole-brain level is one of the most challenging research goals in neuroscience. Various whole-brain optical imaging technologies with submicron lateral resolution have been developed to reveal the fine structures of brain-wide neural and vascular networks at the mesoscopic level. Among them, micro-optical sectioning tomography (MOST) is attracting increasing attention, as a variety of technological variations and solutions tailored toward different biological applications have been optimized. Here, we summarize the recent development of MOST technology in whole-brain imaging and anticipate future improvements.
Highlights
The brain is one of the most complex systems in nature, controlling all physical and mental activities
Optical imaging technology with good spatial resolution has the natural advantage of imaging anatomical structures in the brain at the mesoscopic level
We have proposed the concept of real-time counterstaining [36]; this approach avoids additional whole-brain staining to provide cellular architecture localization assistance to obtain 3D information of interest
Summary
The brain is one of the most complex systems in nature, controlling all physical and mental activities. World-wide researchers have long been working on deciphering neural processes involved in memory, emotion, thought, and consciousness, along with effective prevention and treatment of brain diseases, from molecular to cellular and neural circuit level [1,2,3,4,5,6] None of these have been comprehensively resolved. Aqueous-based clearing techniques achieves homogenizing the scattering through simple immersion, hyperhydration [23,24] or hydrogel embedding [25,26,27,28,29] These approach has been demonstrated to yield three-dimensional (3D) brainwide distributions of specific cells [30]. The Mouselight platform based on STP [39] and FAST employs a vibratome to achieve the slicing process They used a sectioning thickness of 100 μm to achieve the fastest whole-brain imaging speed of their respective systems.
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