Gatan features 3View at Neuroscience

On Monday afternoon Steve Parkes (pictured left) and I visited the Gatan booth and spoke with Ming Pan (right), VP for Business Development at Gatan Inc. in Pleasanton, CA.

Gatan was featuring its 3View system which offers life scientists, and especially neuroscientists, the ability to obtain in-situ 3D data at extremely fine depth resolution (~50 nm) by using a high-precision ultramicrotome to cut sections of resin-embedded tissues inside a varable-pressure scanning electron microscope. After each section is cut the newly exposed block face is then imaged using backscattered electrons. In this way a set of serial images is produced which can be used to generate 3D models of the tissue at nanometer resolution.

The process is fully automated: in one case, 6000 sections were cut over a period of two weeks without any user intervention.

On a big video display the results of a recent study on neuronal tissue by Mark Ellisman of UCSD were shown.

Ming Pan describes the Gatan 3View system in the video>>>