March 2010 Americas Cover Picture and Story

The cover shows an Alzheimer's disease plaque (red) surrounded by active microglial cells (green). Inset: Volocity from PerkinElmer was used to generate a positive (yellow) and a negative (purple) product of the difference from the mean (PDM) channel. This gives a clear visual display of the areas and the degree of positive and negative correlation. Image courtesy of Professor Elizabeth Head, Sanders-Brown Center on Aging, University of Kentucky.

3D image analysis is the study of volumes, reconstructed from a z-stack of optical sections through a biological sample. With 3D imaging, researchers can gain more information about cellular structure and function, as 3D analysis helps avoid misinterpretation of data by providing more context about precisely what interactions are occurring. Instead of analyzing what interactions appear to be happening, 3D image analysis provides accurate quantifiable data about what actually is occurring in a research sample, thus giving researchers greater confidence in their results.

Demonstrating relationships or associations between two molecules of interest involves determining whether two fluorescent labels are spatially colocalized. Overlaying or merging fluorescent images gives an indication of potential colocalization but can be misleading without correlation analysis.

Volocity is a high-performance modular software for confocal images that more accurate insights about cellular activity. It supports 2D and 3D morphological analysis, measurement of fluorescence localization and colocalization, and the study of trends. Volocity provides improved means of identifying colocalization with a range of channel output options, including the PDM.

Contact:

PerkinElmer Inc

Enquiries: cellularimaging@perkinelmer.com  www.perkinelmer.com/imaging