I just read about an improvement to 2 photon imaging on phys.org and am wondering if the Eyewire team is open to using different methods for imaging cells. And if not, why would that be?
I’ll leave it to the scientists to give a more specific answer to this one, but I think the main limiting factor is resolution. We are currently using Electron Microscopy (EM) which much higher resolution than Light Microscopy (LM). This article says it’s better than current LM, but it isn’t really specific about what the resolution of the new technique is, but if it isn’t as good as what we are currently doing then it probably wouldn’t work out…
It’s also worth noting that we have our own EM in house, which we are working on gathering our own data with. There’s also been talk of using LM and EM in conjunction for different purposes.
I’ll see if I can get our microscope guy to give a better answer to this one.
Would SIMS be a suitable alternative? In a research group at TU Vienna (where I also did my bac. thesis) I saw 3D-images of E.coli using ToF-SIMS. Resolution should be ok and chemical information could also be obtained!