Explorable Microscopy has enabled a wide range of disciplines to conduct new research and reveal hidden details in specimens that were not feasible or even possible to view previously.
Below are a few ways that the technology is being applied to science, education, biology, and health studies.
Macroinvertebrate Analysis of Aquatic Samples to Assess Water Quality
Dr. John Rawlins, Carnegie Museum of Natural History
Perhaps the single most important environmental resource determining public health worldwide is the sustainable availability of safe drinking water. Freshwater sources, especially surface water and shallow aquifers, are biologically driven ecosystems; their viability and “health” (=ecological integrity through time) cannot be adequately assessed without awareness of the biological organisms living within them, and at what population levels.
Resource managers have therefore turned to using biological indicator systems to assess ecological integrity of natural systems. Indicator organisms in aquatic systems can be vascular plants, algae (including diatoms), bacteria, fungi, vertebrates (especially fish), and invertebrates (especially macroinvertebrates). Accurate assessment of indicator organisms has been severely limited and under-utilized due to: 1) the small size and great number of individual specimens in samples; 2) specimens in samples being intertwined and difficult to separate, observe or count; 3) taxonomic diversity and identification involving dozens to hundreds of possible taxa (family level down to species); 4) fragility of specimens and samples; 6) need for permanently preserved and fully intact samples for future study; 7) challenges for rapidly sharing the enormity of data represented in even a small sample.
The Explorable Microscopy technology will be tested to see if it can overcome these barriers and provide the visual means to accurately assess water quality through observation, counting, verification, and comparison of indicator taxa. Below are a few initial tests to examine strewn samples of biological specimens for analysis.
Honey Bee Colony Collapse Research
Dennis vanEnglesdorp, Penn State University
This bee colony specimen was imaged to test new lighting techniques to illuminate and capture the full depth and detail of each cell from a collapsed honey bee colony frame.
Archiving of Museum Artifacts & Collections
Dr. John Rawlins, Carnegie Museum of Natural History Dr. Matt Lamana, Carnegie Museum of Natural History
Existing imaging devices give only a glimpse of the full range of information available in a specimen. Imagery from high magnification microscopes only provide a small portion of the subject in focus at any given moment. SEM (scanning electron microscopy) devices provide a higher depth of field and focus but are not able to image the entire subject area at full magnifications. Researchers are challenged with the choice between imaging a small localized area in great detail or imaging the whole specimen without the benefit of the microscopic detail.
At institutions such as the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, this challenge is even greater when combined with the task of analyzing surface features, conducting comparison studies, archiving, and providing open access to the millions of specimens in their collection. Across a wide-range of biology disciplines, these basic fundamental challenges are barriers to key research and discovery.
Below are examples of biological specimens that have been imaged during the development, prototyping, and testing phase...
Biological Medical Imaging Applications
Peter Kohl, British Heart Foundation, Oxford University
The bio-application of gigapixel imaging is a no-brainer, as it allows one to effectively combine - in one and the same image - large-scale overview and high-resolution detail, covering a 'zoom-range' of 10-3 to 10-5 orders of magnitude.
That is a range where 'added quantity transforms into a new quality' (a bit like when you steadily add heat to a water kettle, and at some point fluid turns into vapor), as you can now observe general features - say of a tissue histology section - and zoom in to the cellular detail of an area of interest - say to detect heart disease development. If you wanted to do this by simply looking at high-resolution snippets, one at a time, you would more often than not miss the needle in the hay-stack. In our digital age, this is essentially bringing us 'back to the future', as good old analogue photography did have this spatial range built in (although we were largely unable to tap into this potential because of the workload involved).
Nowadays, we use digital displays and are accustomed to seeing a few megapixels at best (so we do not even know what we are missing). Being able to use giga-pixel technologies is going to revolutionize bio-medical research and diagnostics in pretty much the same way that modern world-to-street-view mapping tools have now become an everyday occurrence for locating other areas of interest - say a hotel or restaurant when you are in unfamiliar territory. So - this whole development is far from being an exercise in 'the more the merrier'. Instead, it lays the seeds for a revolution in digital image information capture, storage, access, and processing."
This test specimen below was imaged by Jay Longson with the Micro GigaPan enabled Scanning Electron Microscope. The low resolution test was conducted to examine the single heart cells from young female New Zealand white rabbit. Specimen provided by the British Heart Foundation.
