Phase retrieval

Microscopists are often adapting techniques pioneered for astronomy. Adaptive optics is the example you all probably know. Relatedly, phase retrieval was originally developed for telescopic imaging systems, and was adapted for high NA microscopic imaging systems…



Open source intrinsic imaging

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Leonardo Lupori and Raffaele Mazziotti are two fellows in lab of the excellent Tommaso Pizzorusso. They have developed an intrinsic signal optical imaging rig and are sharing all of the materials. Here’s their web…



Upconversion: NIR in, vis out

Compared to visible (vis) light, near infrared (NIR) wavelength scatters less and is less absorbed in brain tissue. If your fluorescent target absorbs vis light, then one way to use NIR is to flood the…



Coolant lines for lasers

Many lasers have baseplates with channels through which chilled water is pumped to dissipate heat and stabilize the temperature of the system. I haven’t had much trouble with the chillers and baseplates of Newport/Spectra-Physics…



Intersectional strategies: CRE-DOG

Intersectional strategies are rapidly growing in sophistication. Unfortunately, it still takes time to generate mice and make crosses as needed, so short cuts are handy.

The CRE-DOG technique, from Connie Cepko’s lab, induces expression in…



Imaging Course at Max Planck Florida

The Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience is holding an imaging course Jan 11-20, 2016.
They have a really excellent line up of lecturers. A range of topics will be covered: two-photon imaging, FLIM, FRET, endoscopy, uncaging, optogenetics, SPIM, image analysis, instrumentation (alignment, system design), …

Applications are due in a few days, Nov….



Cute trick for spinning down tubes

The web site is in Japanese, but the pictures and gif are self explanatory.



Neurolabware SfN party v2.0

Neurolabware is having another SfN party this year.



2015 Kavli Futures Symposium for Neurotechnologies

The 2015 Kavli Futures Symposium on “Next Generation NeuroTechnologies” will be Sept 26 in NYC. Freeman, Ji, Svoboda, Pillow, and others are all speaking. Here’s a link. Registration is filling up fast.



Calcium imaging analysis GUI for MATLAB

Stephan (currently in the Gilbert lab @ Rockefeller) wrote in to share his code for analyzing calcium signalling data in MATLAB. Thanks, Stephan!

Stephan writes…

I made a MATLAB GUI that automatically extracts ROIs from…



CodeV, Zemax, OSLO, or …

Trying to decide which optical design software to use? Just try them out and decide for yourself. I like how Steve Eckhardt (great guy, btw, in case you’re looking for someone to consult…



PackIO for NI devices

Adam Packer wrote some LabVIEW software for acquiring and generating data from National Instruments cards called PackIO. It is meant to trigger and synchronize equipment as well as record any data, with a…



Voice control

Voice control has just recently become interesting to me. Ikuko bought me an Amazon Echo and I’m surprised at how useful I find it. I’m also surprised at how well it works– it can…



Preprints and the wide field of view 2-photon

The preprint for the wide field of view 2-photon system we built has been updated. Check it out at bioRxiv.org.

Preprint servers are a great way to share work-in-progress. ArXiv and…



an hdf5/matlab file browser

Michael Graupner has coded a nice program for browsing and managing hdf5 files (closely related to MATLAB files) called hdf5Manager. And it’s open source.