A Novel Method for Constructing Histological Section Datasets of the Basal Ganglia in Digitized Human Brain

TL;DR: A systematic method of cutting, slicing, staining, data acquisition and image registration of large tissue blocks was established, providing a reference for histological data acquisition on the digital human.

Abstract: To investigate the construction of the histological section datasets in the basal ganglia of digitized human brain to provide a reference for the meso-level histological data acquisition. A fresh adult brain from a cadaver with no neurological disease was selected, and tissue blocks of the basal ganglia in the right hemisphere was extracted using the visualization method, followed by pretreatments including gradient dehydrating, gelatin-embedding and setting of calibration points. And then the tissue blocks was cryosectioned into 60-μm-thick coronal sections and the sectional images were captured simultaneously by a digital camera at a fixed position. Two series of sections (one section out of ten) were Nissl-stained with Toluidine blue and immunostained with the calbindin D-28K, respectively. Stained sections were digitized by a high resolution scanner. After alignment and registration, contours of nuclei and different nucleic function divisions in the digital images of stained sections were identified, and then were segmented and labeled using software exploited by ourselves. Datasets of one set of registrated serial sectional images and two sets of registrated histochemically stained images in basal ganglia area were obtained, which provide a histological reference for the neurosurgery and diagnostic imaging. a systematic method of cutting, slicing, staining, data acquisition and image registration of large tissue blocks was established, providing a reference for histological data acquisition on the digital human. Anat Rec, 300:1011-1021, 2017. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.