de S e Silva Juliana Martins, Zanette Irene, Noël Peter B, Cardoso Mateus B, Kimm Melanie A, Pfeiffer Franz
Lehrstuhl für Biomedizinische Physik, Physik-Department &Institut für Medizintechnik, Technische Universität München, 85748 Garching, Germany.
Brazilian Synchrotron Light Laboratory, 13083-970, Campinas, Brazil.
Sci Rep. 2015 Sep 25;5:14088. doi: 10.1038/srep14088.
Low inherent contrast in soft tissues has been limiting the use of X-ray absorption micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) to access high-resolution structural information of animal organs. The staining agents used in micro-CT to improve the contrast fail in providing high-quality images of whole organs of animals due to diffusion problems of the staining agent into the sample. We demonstrate a staining protocol that incorporates a biochemical conditioning step prior to exposure to the staining agent that succeeds in overcoming the diffusion problems, thus quickly providing high-quality micro-CT images of whole organs of mammals. Besides of yielding non-distorted three-dimensional information at the same spatial resolution accessible in histological sections, micro-CT images of whole organs stained by our method enable easy screening of slices along any direction of the volume thus demonstrating new possibilities of structural analysis in biomedical science.
软组织中固有的低对比度限制了X射线吸收显微计算机断层扫描（显微CT）用于获取动物器官高分辨率结构信息的应用。显微CT中用于提高对比度的染色剂，由于其向样品中的扩散问题，无法提供动物全器官的高质量图像。我们展示了一种染色方案，该方案在接触染色剂之前纳入了一个生化预处理步骤，成功克服了扩散问题，从而快速提供哺乳动物全器官的高质量显微CT图像。除了在与组织学切片相同的空间分辨率下产生无失真的三维信息外，用我们的方法染色的全器官显微CT图像还能轻松地沿体积的任何方向筛选切片，从而展示了生物医学科学中结构分析的新可能性。
