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Abstract

Neuroscience

Optical Clearing and Labeling for Light-sheet Fluorescence Microscopy in Large-scale Human Brain Imaging

Published: January 26th, 2024

DOI:

10.3791/65960

1European Laboratory for Non-linear Spectroscopy (LENS), University of Florence, 2Division of Physiology, Department of Experimental and Clinical Medicine, University of Florence, 3Department of Physics, University of Pisa, 4National Research Council - National Institute of Optics (CNR-INO), 5Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Florence, 6Department of Biology, University of Florence

* These authors contributed equally

Abstract

Despite the numerous clearing techniques that emerged in the last decade, processing postmortem human brains remains a challenging task due to its dimensions and complexity, which make imaging with micrometer resolution particularly difficult. This paper presents a protocol to perform the reconstruction of volumetric portions of the human brain by simultaneously processing tens of sections with the SHORT (SWITCH - H2O2 - Antigen Retrieval - 2,2'-thiodiethanol [TDE]) tissue transformation protocol, which enables clearing, labeling, and sequential imaging of the samples with light-sheet fluorescence microscopy (LSFM). SHORT provides rapid tissue clearing and homogeneous multi-labeling of thick slices with several neuronal markers, enabling the identification of different neuronal subpopulations in both white and grey matter. After clearing, the slices are imaged via LSFM with micrometer resolution and in multiple channels simultaneously for a rapid 3D reconstruction. By combining SHORT with LSFM analysis within a routinely high-throughput protocol, it is possible to obtain the 3D cytoarchitecture reconstruction of large volumetric areas at high resolution in a short time, thus enabling comprehensive structural characterization of the human brain.

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Keywords Optical Clearing

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