Light-Sheet Unlocks Speed for Whole Human Brain Microscopy

In a human brain, around 200 billion cells are working together, shaping who a person is. Grasping their complex organization, even in a single brain, remains a major challenge. Advances in tissue clearing provide a window onto cells inside of intact brains; however, imaging cleared tissues on the scale of the whole human brain presents many challenges, with conventional methods likely to require years of acquisition time per brain.

This presentation will reveal a complete imaging and analysis pipeline developed specifically to achieve high-throughput, multispectral imaging of entire, cleared and immunolabeled human brains at cellular resolution for cell-type atlasing with acquisition times of about two weeks. The human brain optimized light-sheet (HOLIS) microscopy system is a form of oblique-plane single objective light-sheet, capable of imaging 5 mm thick, optically cleared, complete coronal sections of human brain designed for highest throughput acquisition and cell type resolved atlasing with data analysis in mind.