When About 150-year-old Golgi Staining Technique Meets Photoacoustic Microscopy

Meng-Lin Li^1,2,3*

¹Dept. of Electrical Engineering, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan
²Institute of Photonics Technologies, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan
³Brain Research Center, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan

* Presenter:Meng-Lin Li, email:mlli@ee.nthu.edu.tw

Comprehensive mapping of neural structures facilitates understanding information flow and the changes in the brain. For this purpose, Golgi staining technique, a Nobel Prize winning technique, was invented about 150 years ago. This classical technique relies on a deposition of metal precipitate in neurons to enable the visualization of neural structures with bright field optical microscopy. Photoacoustic microscopy (PAM) is a novel microscopic technique based on photoacoustic effect, featuring optical absorption contrast and high spatial resolution, and draws more and more attention in recent years in brain imaging. In this talk, I will show PAM and Golgi staining both naturally fit with each other, and share our recent work combining the two techniques toward high speed, large volume and high contrast connectome imaging of model organisms – an unmet need in neuro-imaging.

Keywords: Golgi staining, Photoacoustic microscopy, Connectome imaging