SmartSPIM

β-amyloid disease plaques in magenta, astrocytes (GFAP) in cyan, 15X. Sample courtesy of Epp Lab, University of Calgary.

Light sheet microscope built for intact tissues

With uniform axial resolution across the whole sample, rapid volumetric imaging, and a custom-designed imaging chamber, our SmartSPIM light sheet imaging system provides the accuracy, speed, and flexibility you need to generate the highest quality data. Easily craft publication-ready analysis outputs with our SmartAnalytics workstation, tailor-made for SmartSPIM.

Technical specifications

Sample courtesy of Lai Lab, UT Southwestern.

Immunolabeled GFAP (cyan) and Beta-amyloid plaques (magenta) in a 5xFAD mouse brain model of Alzheimer’s disease. 4x objective. Sample courtesy of Epp Lab, University of Calgary.

Retrogradely labeled motor cortical neurons projecting to striatum using rabies virus expressing eGFP. 10x, Sample courtesy of Prof. Byungkook Lim’s lab at UCSD.

Mouse brain hemisphere displaying ChAT-positive neurons in both the brainstem and basal forebrain and dense labeling of Neuropeptide Y throughout the hypothalamus. Tissue immunolabeled anti-NPY (cyan) and anti-ChAT (magenta). Imaged using at 4 µm Z-step and 1.8 µm XY pixel size. Tissue courtesy of Hongwei Dong, Bin Zhang, and Neda Khanjani and the Center for Integrative Connectomics (CIC) lab.

Nuclear stain (SYTO16, in cyan) and vasculature stain (DyLight 649-conjugated tomato lectin, in pink). Tissue provided by Translational Bioimaging Group at the Barrow Neurological Institute.

Mouse duodenum segment, perfused with lectin (red) to label vasculature and immunolabeled with anti-Olfm4 stem cell marker (cyan). Imaged at 2 µm Z-step and 1.8 µm XY pixel size. Sample courtesy of Dr. Chaudhry of the Ferrara Bone Marrow Transplantation Lab at the Icahn School of Medicine.

Microglia (IBA-1, 647 nm) in cortex of a 7-month-old wild-type C57BL/6 male mouse from Taconic Biosciences, model #B6. Imaged with SmartSPIM, 3.6X magnification. — Microglia imaged with axial sweeping

Uniform axial resolution

SmartSPIM leverages patented axial sweeping technology (Dean et al. 2015): illumination optics scan the beam while synchronized to the camera’s rolling shutter detection, providing homogeneous axial point spread functions (PSFz) across the entire field of view (FOV).

Left: The sample imaged without axial sweeping has high axial resolution only at the center of the FOV, while the sample imaged with sweeping has uniform axial resolution across the FOV.

Microglia (IBA-1, 647 nm) in cortex of a 7-month-old wild-type C57BL/6 male mouse from Taconic Biosciences, model #B6, 3.6X.

High speed, high resolution microscopy

Tunable imaging parameters allow for high speed volumetric imaging while maintaining quality resolution. 20 fps acquisition allows imaging of a mouse brain hemisphere or comparably sized intact sample in <30 minutes (at 1.8 µm x 1.8 µm x 4 µm voxel size).

Intuitive & customizable

Streamlined for efficient data collection, SmartSPIM’s acquisition software has real-time tile correction and is simple to operate, making imaging large samples a breeze.

Custom-designed imaging chamber and sample holders can accommodate a variety of tissue sizes, from organoids to rat brains, and even entire juvenile mice! With no points of contact between tissue and mounting hardware, the user can mount many sample types and sizes in different orientations.

"Working with colleagues at LifeCanvas Technologies has opened an entirely new avenue of research for us. Our interest has focused on increasing the spatial resolution in magnetic resonance histology — microscopic imaging of the rodent brain, to allow studies of the mouse brain connectome. Using the clearing/light sheet with the Thy 1 mouse has yielded in the same specimen, diffusion tensor MRI images and the opportunity to validate specific motor pathways. Merging the two yields a sum that is far more than the individual parts. We see the light sheet data from our colleagues at LifeCanvas Technologies as a critical new complement to our MR methodologies. Our colleagues there have been more than helpful and we look forward to extended collaboration in the future."

G Allan Johnson, Ph.D.

Charles E Putman Professor of Radiology,
Duke University School of Medicine

Publications citing SmartSPIM

2021:

Nobre et al. “MiRNA-Mediated Knockdown of ATXN3 Alleviates Molecular Disease Hallmarks in a Mouse Model for Spinocerebellar Ataxia Type 3.” Nucleic Acid Therapeutics (December 2021).
Foster et al. “The Mouse Cortico-Basal Ganglia-Thalamic Network.” Nature (October 2021).
Muñoz-Castañeda et al. “Cellular Anatomy of the Mouse Primary Motor Cortex.” Nature (October 2021).
Knights et al. “Acetylcholine-synthesizing macrophages in subcutaneous fat are regulated by β2-adrenergic signaling.” The EMBO Journal (August 2021).
Luchsinger et al. “Delineation of an insula-BNST circuit engaged by struggling behavior that regulates avoidance in mice.” Nature Communications (June 2021).
Helseth et al. “Cholinergic neurons constitutively engage the ISR fordopamine modulation and skill learning in mice.” Science (April 2021).
Sweeney et al. “The melanocortin-3 receptor is a pharmacological target for the regulation of anorexia.” Science Translational Medicine (April 2021).

2020:

Albanese et al. “Multiscale 3D Phenotyping of Human Cerebral Organoids.” Scientific Reports (December 2020).
Pop et al. “Evidence for Genetically Distinct Direct and Indirect Spinocerebellar Pathways Mediating Proprioception.” bioRxiv (August 2020).
Klinghoffer et al. “Self-Supervised Feature Extraction for 3D Axon Segmentation.” arXiv (April 2020).
Ogujiofor et al. “Motor Neurons Involved in Fine Motor Control Are Labeled by Tracing Atoh1-Lineage Neurons in the Spinal Cord.” bioRxiv (March 2020).

2019:

Roy et al. “Brain-Wide Mapping of Contextual Fear Memory Engram Ensembles Supports the Dispersed Engram Complex Hypothesis.” bioRxiv (June 2019).
Yun et al. “Ultrafast Immunostaining of Organ-Scale Tissues for Scalable Proteomic Phenotyping.” bioRxiv (June 2019).
Swaney et al. “Scalable Image Processing Techniques for Quantitative Analysis of Volumetric Biological Images from Light-Sheet Microscopy.” bioRxiv (March 2019).

2018:

Park et al. “Protection of Tissue Physicochemical Properties Using Polyfunctional Crosslinkers.” Nature Biotechnology (December 2018).