Rapid imaging of mammalian brain slices with a compact light sheet fluorescent microscope
Yang Z., Haslehurst P., Scott S., Emptage N., Dholakia K.
Light sheet fluorescent microscopy is able to provide high acquisition speed and high contrast images, as well as the low photo-bleaching and photo-damage brought to the sample. Here we describe a compact setup design optimized for applications in neuroscience, in particular fast imaging of sub-neuronal structures in mammalian brain slices. We report this prototype instrument is capable of rapid imaging wide area of the dendritic or axonal arbor of a dye-filled neuron in hippocampal slice. We also show several applications of this compact light sheet fluorescent microscope, to demonstrate that our approach offers a powerful functionality to the neuroscience community that is not achievable with traditional imaging methods.