Tissue Clearing

The University Imaging Centers integrates the most recent tissue clearing and imaging technologies in order to image and analyze intact tissues and organs in three dimensions. Tissue clearing has been developed in multiple laboratories to make tissues optically transparent to optimize whole-mount imaging. It also enables internal structure preservation and permeability to macromolecules like stains and antibodies. The UIC employs multiple clearing and labeling approaches with X-CLARITY being the most widely useful. With the X-CLARITY method, tissue is immobilized in a hydrogel to study fluorescent labels in biological systems in 3D. This approach brings a new dimension to histology services. This step can process samples of various sizes (the smaller the better with < 8 cubic mm optimal, although larger may be possible and is limited by the imaging modality you require). We have sample holders for 6 mouse brain-sized samples, 2 rat brain-sized samples, tissue slices (<1.5mm each), and 48 tissue samples (< 3 cubic mm each), with many other options.