Mail*Link(r) SMTP Help w/3d neural imaging.
Hello. I'm currently doing graduate work at the University of Toronto,
with Dr. James Fullard. One of the projects that I'm assessing is to
build a 3 dimensional map of an insect ganglion.
Ideally, I'd like to do the following:
Digitize a Janus-B stained ganglia for the rough area.
Intracellularly stain first order afferent and efferent pathways.
Use this data to target potential interneuron sites.
Overlay activity data from a program such as axotape.
Eventually add electron microscopy zooms of specifc sites, although
this is not highly important at this time.
Also, it would be nice if I could do some statistical analysis of
structures, such as average locations on a xyz grid and in reference to
landmarks. However, my main focus right now is just to begin building
the map.
What I'd like to know is:
Has anyone done anything similar?
Does anyone have any suggestions for the software application,
something that can intergrate hundreds of serial slices using different
stains?
Any suggestions for the hardware? We're about to buy a Dell Pentium
Pro 200 with 4 meg VRAM running Windows NT 4.0. It's within budget. What
type of samplers for the light microscopy would people suggest?
Any theoretical comments on the value of building this wonking big
jigsaw puzzle?
Any assistances would of course be greatly appreciated.
Scott Jacoves
Dept of Zoology, Neuroethology
University of Toronto
3349 Mississauga RD
Mississauga, ON
L5L 1J7
