Image of the Week - 09 December 2003

Comparison of Deconvolution and Confocal Optical Sectioning Modalities

Trypanosome undergoing cell division; flagellar structures are formed prior to complete separation of daughter cells. The specimen was stained with FM 1-43 to highlight the membrane structure, and Propidium Iodide labels the chromatin in the nuclei. Image A is the result of image acquisition and reconstruction on the Applied Precision DeltaVision Spectris system, Image B is the same specimen imaged on a Leica SP-2. After application of color lookup tables, it is apparent that the higher noise levels and relatively low contrast in the SP-2 confocal images degrade the information content of the data at this size scale. The deconvolution image appears slightly saturated due to the complication of adapting the 16 bit dynamic range to 8-bits for web presentation; the confocal image was taken at 12 bits (maximum dynamic range) and interpolated to 8-bits. The histogram is normalized for both datasets.

Image Courtesy: Rebecca Richards, Applied Precision LLC and Karl Garsha, ITG Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, UIUC

Contact: garsha@itg.uiuc.edu