Precision vibratome for high-speed ultrathin biotissue cutting and organ-wide imaging

Abstract

Summary Cutting tissues into ultrathin slices is highly desired in sectioning-based organ-wide imaging. However, it is difficult to perform tissue cutting at a high speed with excellent quality. Here, we design a precision vibratome based on a paired double parallelogram flexure, which enables a vibrating blade to move strictly along a straight line. Meanwhile, we develop a high-speed cutting method that does not compromise cutting quality, which the vibratome operated at a high frequency mode. The characterized parasitic motion errors of a 180-Hz vibratome were less than 300 nm. It achieved a cutting speed six times that of an 85-Hz vibratome with acceptable quality. The capacity of the vibratome was investigated by organ-wide imaging, and the results revealed that it can be adapted in different tissues, such as the mouse brain and liver. This new vibratome shows great potential in speeding up organ-wide imaging applications especially for large volume biotissues.

Automated Vibratome Sectioning of Agarose-Embedded Lung Tissue for Multiplex Fluorescence Imaging

“…In this protocol, we present an improved vibratome-based method for generating lung sections. Compared to paraffinbased processing techniques, this method is more cost effective, time efficient, and better for the environment 22 .…”

Whole-brain Optical Imaging: A Powerful Tool for Precise Brain Mapping at the Mesoscopic Level

“…Moreover, diverse histological sectioning techniques have been developed for embedding and sectioning the whole mouse brain. For example, resinembedded sectioning can achieve submicron accuracy [86,87], agarose-embedded vibrating sectioning can preserve the morphology of the tissue well [88][89][90], cryosectioning or liquid nitrogen milling can maintain the biochemical characteristics of the sample [91,92], and paraffin-embedded sectioning enables the semithin sectioning of large tissues [93,94]. The imaging quality and speed of such whole-brain imaging methods largely depend on the selection and implementation of the imaging and sectioning techniques.…”

Harnessing preclinical models for the interrogation of ovarian cancer

“…Technologically, the thickness of explants might affect the viability during culture and drug response considering the efficiency of nutrition diffusion and metabolites transportation. Manual slicing with surgical equipment used to be the most common method in tissue preparation yet has now been gradually replaced by mechanized methods such as the vibratome [148], which can uniform the thickness of slices. According to the report of Parajuli N et al, a slice thickness of 160 μm is optimal for tissue handling and viability [149].…”