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Table of Contents

Papers you should read before you start:

  • Fiala JC (2005) Reconstruct: A free editor for serial section microscopy. J Microscopy 218:52-61. (PDF)
  • Fiala JC, Harris KM (2001) Cylindrical diameters method for calibrating section thickness in serial electron microscopy. J Microscopy 202(3):468-472. (PDF)
  • Harris KM, Spacek J, Bell ME, Parker PH, Lindsey LF, Baden AD, Vogelstein JT, Burns R (2015) A resource from 3D electron microscopy of hippocampal neuropil for user training and tool development. Sci Data Sep 1;2:150046. PMCID: PMC4555877. (PDFTables)
  • Harris KM (1994) Serial electron microscopy as an alternative or complement to confocal microscopy for the study of synapses and dendritic spines in the central nervous system. In: Three-dimensional confocal microscopy: volume investigation of biological specimens (Stevens JK, Mills LR, Trogadis JE eds), pp 421-445. New York: Academic Press, Inc. (PDF)

Steps for starting a new series from scratch:

  1. Have a Dendrite Analysis Spreadsheet ready and record all pertinent information as you work.
  2. Make a new series & import images
  3. Calibrate pixel size
  4. Align EM images & propagate (if manually done in Reconstruct)
  5. Calibrate section thickness

Step 1: Make a new series & import images

Please see the Starting a New Series PDF for complete details.

Step 2: Calibrate pixel size

Please see the Calibration Protocol PDF for complete details. 

Here is the Calibration Protocol - using a scale bar PDF if you need to calibrate using a scale bar.

WARNING: CALIBRATION MUST BE DONE BEFORE YOU START TRACING.

Step 3:

Alignment

Manual alignment of serial EM

images 

images in Reconstruct

Please see the Reconstruct Alignment Protocol. (PDF, Word)

Protocol for TrakEM2 alignment is in progress... coming soon!serial EM image alignment using AlignEM-SWiFT or /wiki/spaces/khlab/pages/53543137 is also available.