New application of microscopy software helps determine man's evolutionary progress with greater certainty
Syncroscopy says that announce Auto-Montage, its unique imaging system, is helping researchers to save time and obtain accurate images of difficult to see three-dimensional imaging levels of hard tissues.
Researchers at the US-based Hard Tissue Research Unit (HTRU) used a unique portable confocal microscope (developed by HTRU) in conjunction with Auto-Montage to capture and analyse varying three-dimensional imaging levels of irregular bone and tooth surfaces.
The resulting Montage images are allowing them to produce accurate images of rare early hominid skeletons (some of which are several millions of years old), a task they have previously been unable to perform.
Timothy Bromage, professor of anthropology at HTRU commented: "These unique skeletons are millions of years old and we are not allowed to section them to look at their internal histology.
Auto-Montage is extremely helpful here because we use it on skeletal elements, which have been broken during fossilisation to capture images of both the irregular surface of the fracture as well as the histology deep to the surface.
The resulting montage image helps us understand what is happening at various three-dimensional imaging levels of the bone." "With the software we can generate two important views of the specimen: we can produce a three-dimensional image of the irregular surface; and we can image the histology within this complex surface and collapse the Z heights into a two-dimensional plane to generate one single field of view.
Producing such accurate images of these hard tissues makes it easier for us to chart man's evolutionary progress with greater certainty," continued Professor Bromage.
Bob Town, Syncroscopy's general sales manager added: "We are delighted to see Auto-Montage being applied to solving important yet unanswered evolutionary questions at such a prestigious imaging facility.
Their work shows Auto-Montage can quickly and conveniently produce more true to life two-dimensional images of difficult to image three-dimensional specimens, which makes it an essential tool for microscopists demanding the same from their research."
