Centre for Neurotechnology Seminar from Tim Ragan, CEO of Tissue Vision
Abstract
Serial Two-Photon Tomography is a powerful method for whole 3D tissue analysis. It alternates high speed two-photon microscopy with mechanical sectioning of a tissue into thin sections. Two-photon microscopy allows 3D tissues to be imaged with high contrast and sub-micron resolution without the need for any type of tissue clearing, thus minimally perturbing underlying biochemical signatures and tissue morphology. The tissue sections that are produced as a product of the method are available for a wide variety of downstream analyses, from immunohistochemistry (IHC), ISH (in situ hybridization), mass spectrometry, and other imaging and biochemical techniques. The outputs of these downstream analyses can be readily mapped back onto the original 3D dataset and thus provide whole 3D tissue multiplexed datasets that combine previously siloed modalities.
This talk will describe several applications of this approach, including studies involving Second and Third Harmonic generation signatures in fibrosis and cancer models as well as IHC in whole brain studies in mouse models of Alzheimer’s Disease.
Biography
Tim Ragan earned his PhD in Biophysics and Computational Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he developed some of the earliest two-photon microscopy systems. He continued his studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he conducted research on 3D high resolution imaging and analysis of tissues. At MIT he invented Serial Two-Photon Tomography and went on to found TissueVision with the aid of several NIH SBIR grants and commercialize STP Tomography under the TissueCyte platform. He serves as TissueVision’s CEO and helps lead the Company’s technology, strategy and overall direction.