Improvision and MBF - 3D Neuron Tracing

Improvision and MBF Bioscience are working together in a unique partnership to provide the best in 3D neuron tracing systems. MBF creates products that are used and trusted by neuroscientists as the most reliable and accurate for neuroanatomical studies; Improvision provides the ultimate in 3D rendering technology for the life sciences. This exciting collaboration opens new opportunities for users of Volocity and Neurolucida, presenting an integrated solution for tracing and displaying branch analysis data from neuroanatomical studies.

Neuronal cell 3D rendered in Volocity	Neuronal tracing of the same cell created in Neurolucida/AutoNeuron and 3D rendered in Volocity

MBF Bioscience is the developer of Neurolucida, an advanced scientific software system for performing brain mapping, neuron tracing, anatomical mapping, and morphometry, including 3D measurement and reconstruction of branching processes. The product can be enhanced by the addition of AutoNeuron for fast, accurate, fully editable automatic tracing of branching structures. Both products provide outstanding performance in terms of accuracy and reliability of results and are used and trusted by scientists around the world.

With the release of Volocity 4.1, tracing data from Neurolucida and AutoNeuron can be displayed as overlays to the image data. This allows the Volocity user to take full advantage of the powerful visualization tools of Volocity to explore the tracing in relation to the images. For 3D data, the tracing is displayed as a high quality, fully interactive volume rendering that can be rotated, zoomed and flown through, either with or without the image data. You can choose to display all or just some of the traced items as required to improve your understanding of the results.

Using the functions including in Volocity Visualization, you can create bookmarks and QuickTime or AVI movies to share and publish as well as 2D snapshots and QTVR movies.

Follow the workflow to see how easy it is to achieve results:

Step 1. Acquire a z stack of images through your sample using Volocity Acquisition. Alternatively, import image data acquired on a confocal or wide field system. Export the image sequence to Neurolucida or AutoNeuron and perform the anatomical analysis.	Step 2. Import the tracing file into Volocity. The tracing file appears as a Measurement item in the library. Open the Measurement item and highlight the tracing items of interest.

Step 3. Open the image sequence to view the tracing overlaid on the image data, either in the Image view or the 3D view. Choose to display just the tracing or the tracing and images as required.

Step 4. Make movies! Take snapshots! Explore!

For further details about Neurolucida Workstation and AutoNeuron, which can be purchased directly from Improvision, please visit the Volocity Partner Products page.

Requires Volocity Visualization and Volocity Quantitation, version 4.1 and higher.

Requires Neurolucida version 7.51 and higher.