The objective of this program is to develop a high-throughput and high-resolution 3D tissue scanner with an Internet-connected 3D virtual microscope for large-scale automated histology. The instrument will digitize a wide variety of organs and generate 3D data sets. A data processing pipeline will automatically convert the raw data sets into aligned volumetric data sets without human intervention. Therefore immediate access to the large-scale histological data will be possible for a wide variety of research and research training communities.
The intellectual merit is as follows. Large-scale output data of the instrument will be easily acquired and shared through the fast scanner, data processing pipelines, and web-based visualization framework. In the past, investigation of biological organs were limited to either gross system-level studies or highly detailed microscopic analysis of small subsets of the organ. The new tissue scanner will digitally restore tissue structure in 3D with a specialized visualization framework that helps researchers to fully understand function of biological organs.
The broader impacts are three folds: (1) Obtaining digitized high-resolution data for multi-scale investigation of biological organs at a high acquisition rate will open up new areas of research in the community. (2) For education infrastructure, microscopic atlases of whole biological organs can serve as educational materials for students and educators at all levels. (3) For dissemination, the project results will provide research communities with a new 3D tissue scanner with a virtual microscope by which researchers can obtain digitized 3D tissue data in sub-micron level resolution from a tissue sample.
