[MURG] Lasers take 3D brain scans

[Joseph J. Strout]

Additional blubs (some with more info):

http://www.aip.org/enews/physnews/2003/split/640-1.html

They claim a resolution that "approaches" 30 um, or 30000 nm.  That's 
a factor of 3000 lower than what we probably need, but that's OK -- I 
still think this is an important step.  Combined with something like 
NSOM, we could get much closer to the goal.

A bigger problem is that the ablation happens 100 um at a time.  I'm 
not sure how much that could be narrowed down.

http://bric.postech.ac.kr/science/97now/03_6now/030604a.html

Heh -- in this one, they claim 1 um resolution, and 10 um ablation. 
Shows how much you can trust news pieces!

http://www.opticsinfobase.org/abstract.cfm?id=69732

A different paper by Squier, pointing out how ultrafast lasers are 
now accessible to nonphysicists.  Could be relevant to some of the 
researchers in this group.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-05/aiop-ai052103.php

Short blurb about halfway down, also names the collaborators -- Phil 
Tsai and David Kleinfeld at UCSD.  I don't know these guys well, 
though I did spend a little time with Kleinfeld a few years ago. 
Hmm...  Here's David's site:

	http://physics.ucsd.edu/neurophysics/

I don't find any mention of this research there, however.

Well, I expect this technique will catch on and continue to be 
refined over the next several years, since it drastically reduces the 
amount of labor (and skill) involved in obtaining a serial 
reconstruction, even if the resulting resolution isn't quite as good. 
Definitely something to keep an eye on!

Cheers,
- Joe

P.S. And you all thought I had gone!  :)

-- 
,------------------------------------------------------------------.
|    Joseph J. Strout         Check out the Mac Web Directory:     |
|    joe at strout.net           http://www.macwebdir.com/            |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'