Summary
Rapid imaging of large biological tissue specimens such as ultrathick sections of mouse brain cannot easily be performed with a standard microscope. Optical mesoscopy offers a solution, but thus far imaging has been too slow to be useful for routine use. We have developed two different illuminators for light-sheet mesoscopy with the Mesolens and we demonstrate their use in high-speed optical mesoscale imaging of large tissue specimens. The first light-sheet approach uses Gaussian optics and is straightforward to implement. It provides excellent lateral resolution and high-speed imaging, but the axial resolution is poor. The second light-sheet is a more complex Airy light-sheet that provides sub-cellular resolution in three dimensions that is comparable in quality to point-scanning confocal mesoscopy, but the light-sheet method of illuminating the specimen reduces the imaging time by a factor of 14. This creates new possibilities for high-content, higher-throughput optical bioimaging at the mesoscale.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Footnotes
↵* joint first authors
↵† senior author
Additional author contact information: jan.schniete{at}strath.ac.uk, katrina.wesencraft{at}strath.ac.uk, juan.quintana{at}glasgow.ac.uk, g.mcconnell{at}strath.ac.uk
Data availability statement: All data underpinning this publication are publicly available on request from the University of Strathclyde KnowledgeBase at: https://doi.org/10.15129/b44a4a73-ae23-46f2-b13f-5017955e8fe2
Ethics: Animal experimentation: All experimental procedures using animals were conducted in strict accordance with the United Kingdom Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act, 1986 and approved by the Home Office (UK).
https://doi.org/10.15129/b44a4a73-ae23-46f2-b13f-5017955e8fe2