Welcome to the Amira-Avizo Software Use Case Gallery

Mammalian epididymal epithelial cells are crucial for sperm maturation. Historically,
vacuole-like ultrastructures in epididymal epithelial cells were
observed via transmission electron microscopy but were undefined. Here, we
utilize volume electron microscopy (vEM) to generate 3D reconstructions of
epididymal epithelial cells and identify these vacuoles as intercellular organelle
reservoirs (IORs) in the lateral intercellular space (LIS), which contains
pr... Read more

Computed tomography (CT) enables rapid imaging of large-scale studies of bone, but those datasets typically require manual segmentation, which is time-consuming and prone to error. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) offer an automated solution, achieving superior performance on image data. In this methodology-focused paper, we used CNNs to train segmentation models from scratch on 2D and 3D patches from micro-CT scans of otter long bones. These new models, collectively called BONe (Bone One... Read more

Alphaviruses are mosquito-borne viruses that cause serious disease in humans and other mammals. Along with its mosquito vector, the Alphavirus chikungunya virus (CHIKV) has spread explosively in the last 20 years, and there is no approved treatment for chikungunya fever. On the plasma membrane of the infected cell, CHIKV generates dedicated organelles for viral RNA replication, so-called spherules. Whereas structures exist for several viral proteins that make up the spherule, ... Read more

Focused-ion beam-scanning electron microscopic (FIB-SEM) tomography enables easier acquisition of a series of ultrastructural, sectional images directly from resin-embedded biological samples. In this study, to clarify the three-dimensional (3D) architecture of glomerular endothelial cells (GEnCs) in adult rats, we manually extracted GEnCs from serial FIB-SEM images and reconstructed them on an Amira reconstruction software. The luminal and basal surface structures were clearly visualized in ... Read more

The liver contains a variety of vessels and participates in miscellaneous physiological functions. While past studies generally focused on certain hepatic vessels, we simultaneously obtained all the vessels and cytoarchitectural information of the intact mouse liver lobe at single-cell resolution. […] providing a technology roadmap for studying the fine hepatic vascular structures and their spatial relationship, which will help research into liver diseases and evaluation of medical effi... Read more

Our study placed emphasis on solving problems in processing high-throughput bright field images and made attempt in developing a method for the extraction and reconstruction of multiple structures. This will facilitate a better understanding of the cerebral anatomical features under the pathological state of AD and shows extensive application prospect in drug efficacy assessment from brain-wide level.

Simultaneously visualizing Amyloid-β (Aβ) plaque with its surrounding brain structu... Read more

Human skeletal remains from archaeological contexts occasionally present signs of traumatic injuries from weapons, revealing, for example, the degree of interpersonal violence, the type of weapon and the sequence of events of a specific historical context.

Traumatic lesions are generally analyzed using macroscopic and microscopic methods, which are not necessarily integrated in the same study. In this study, we employed a multi-analytical approach to determine i... Read more

Advanced nanotomographic analysis is still far from routine, and a number of challenges remain in data acquisition and post-processing. In this work, we present a number of techniques to improve the quality of the acquired data, together with easy-to-implement methods to obtain “advanced” microstructural quantifications. The techniques are applied to a solid oxide fuel cell cathode of interest to the electrochemistry community, but the methodologies are easily adaptable to a wide range of... Read more

Our team is developing a modern, cross-disciplinary approach to documentation and preservation of astromaterials, specifically lunar and meteorite samples stored at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility.

Apollo Lunar Sample 60639, collected as part of rake sample 60610 during the 3rd Extra-Vehicular Activity of the Apollo 16 mission in 1972, served as the first NASA preserved lunar sample to be examined by our team in the development of a novel approach to int... Read more

Composite cathodes comprising nanoscale
powders are expected to impart with high specific surface
area and triple phase boundary (TPB) density, which will lead
to better performance.

However, uniformly mixing nanosized heterophase powders remains a challenge due to their high surface energy and thus ease with which they agglomerate into their individual phases during the mixing and sintering
processes. In this study, we successfully synthesized La0.6Sr0.4Co0.2Fe... Read more

How do you characterise the contents of a sealed nuclear waste package without breaking it open?

This question is important when the contained corrosion products are potentially reactive with air and radioactive. Synchrotron X-rays have been used to perform micro-scale in-situ observation and characterisation of uranium encapsulated in grout; a simulation for a typical intermediate level waste storage packet. X-ray tomography and X-ray powder diffraction generated both qualitative and ... Read more

Porous materials have attracted great attention for various applications, e.g., catalysis, novel materials, energy related topics, acoustics, microelectronics, actuator, bioengineering and biomimetic. Recently, porous materials have gained interest as interconnect materials for power semiconductor device.

The trend in the semiconductor industry goes towards eco-friendliness and higher energy efficiency. Semiconductor compound materials, such as silicon carbide (SiC) or gallium nitride... Read more

The majority of research into metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) focuses on their crystalline nature. However, in recent research the vitrification of a number of MOFs has been revealed. We propose that the solid-liquid phase transitions involved in MOF-glass formation can provide unique opportunities for the creation of a new class of functional, stable and porous composite materials. Described herein is the design, synthesis, and characterisation of novel metal-organic framework (MOF) crystal-... Read more

Classification and delineation of the motor-related nuclei in the human thalamus have been the focus of numerous discussions for a long time. Difficulties in finding consensus have for the most part been caused by paucity of direct experimental data on connections of individual nuclear entities. Kultas-Ilinsky et al. (2011, J Comp Neurol, 519:2811-2837) showed that distribution of the isoform 65 of glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD65), the enzyme that synthesizes inhibitory neurotransmitt... Read more

4D imaging – the three-dimensional distributions of chemical species determined using multi-energy X-ray tomography – of cathode catalyst layers of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEM-FC) has been measured by scanning transmission x-ray microscopy (STXM) spectro-tomography at the C 1s and F 1s edges. In order to monitor the effects of radiation damage on the composition and 3D structure of the perfluorosulfonic acid (PFSA) ionomer, the same volume was measu... Read more

The appearance of wings in insects, early in their evolution [1], has been one of the more critical innovations contributing to their extraordinary diversity. Despite the conspicuousness and importance of wings, the origin of these structures has been difficult to resolve and represented one of the “abominable mysteries” in evolutionary biology [2]. More than a century of debate has boiled the matter down to two competing alternatives—one of wings representing an extension of the thorac... Read more

Evidence for macroscopic life in the Paleoproterozoic Era comes from 1.8 billion-year-old (Ga) compression fossils [Han TM, Runnegar B (1992) Science 257:232–235; Knoll et al. (2006) Philos Trans R Soc Lond B 361:1023–1038],  Stirling biota [Bengtson S et al. (2007) Paleobiology 33:351–381], and large colonial organisms exhibiting signs of coordinated growth from the 2.1-Ga Francevillian series, Gabon. Here we report on pyritized string-shaped structures from... Read more

We demonstrate feasibility of the workflow by combining in vivo 2-photon microscopy and focused ion beam scanning electron microscopy (FIB/SEM) to dissect the role of astrocytic coverage in the persistence of dendritic spines.

Emerging 3D correlative light and electron microscopy (CLEM) approaches enable studying neuronal structure-function relations at unprecedented depth and precision. However, established protocols for the correlation of light and electron micrographs rely ... Read more

The Braconidae are a megadiverse and ecologically highly important group of insects. The vast majority of braconid wasps are parasitoids of other insects, usually attacking the egg or larval stages of their hosts. The ovipositor plays a crucial role in the assessment of the potential host and precise egg laying. We used lightand electron-microscopic techniques to investigate all inherent cuticular elements of the ovipositor (the female 9th abdominal tergum, two pairs of valvifers, and three p... Read more

High-resolution 3D images of organelles are of paramount importance in cellular biology. Although light microscopy and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) have provided the standard for imaging cellular structures, they cannot provide 3D images.

However, recent technological advances such as serial block-face scanning electron microscopy (SBF-SEM) and focused ion beam scanning electron microscopy (FIB-SEM) provide the tools to create 3D images for the ultrastructural analysis of org... Read more