How imaging of large brain tissue sections benefits from THUNDER’s speed and image quality

A PhD student from the German Cancer Research Center presents her research on chromatin remodeling in brain development using genetically modified mouse models. She explains that she analyzes brain tissue sections with multi-colored immunofluorescent staining and needs to acquire large tile scans across multiple Z-planes.

The researcher evaluates imaging options including traditional wide-field systems, spinning disk microscopy, and confocal imaging. She identifies the Thunder Imager as the optimal solution offering high image quality with fast acquisition times suitable for large brain tissue sections.

Using the Thunder Imager 3D system, the researcher performs tile scans with multiple Z-planes to document the entire brain section and expression of different fluorescent markers. Acquisition of a complete mouse brain section takes 5-15 minutes depending on sample size.

The researcher uses Thunder Large Volume Computational Clearing to remove typical wide-field haze from acquired images. This processing step improves signal-to-noise ratio and enables clear distinction between background and signal for downstream analysis.

The processed images serve as input for automated cell segmentation and counting analysis. The high signal-to-noise ratio and image quality from the Thunder Imager platform enable reliable downstream computational analysis.

The researcher plans continued experiments using the Thunder Imager and the new Leica Mika integrated micro hub system. The automated water immersion cap system enables high-magnification 63x imaging with minimal manual sample handling.