Development of software for automated micro-axialtomography

Micro-axialtomography allows the observation of cells, sub-cellular organelles and their compounds (such as genetic loci or proteins) from an arbitrary angle of view. This is accomplished by means of fixation of the objects to a thin glass fibre and rotation of the fibre around its axis perpendicularly to the optical axis. The cells and their compounds are typically stained by immuno-fluorescence techniques as for instance FISH to label chromatin targets in intact cell nuclei. The rotated objects can be observed in a fluorescence microscope. In order to facilitate the acquisition and analysis of a large number of objects, the development of an appropriate software module has begun that is incorporated into the image acquisition and analysis package FISH 2.0. Currently the module contains trial versions of the algorithms for image acquisition and analysis and the whole system is being tested. Examples of images obtained using micro-axialtomography are presented as well as the description of the algorithms for image acquisition and analysis.