Core Technologies
NCMIR pursues a coordinated, three-pronged approach to achieving its goals of imaging biological systems on a grand scale, focusing core technology development in three areas.
- biological specimen development for intermediate voltage electron microscopes (IVEMs) and correlated microscopies
- instrumentation, including IVEM, camera development, and Telemicroscopy
- advanced software infrastructure applications and database development
Biological Specimen Development for IVEM
NCMIR is building on continued success in developing contrast-enhancing methods, particularly in the area of fluorescence photooxidation of recombinant proteins, for biological specimens that will clearly benefit from the unique capabilities of computer-coupled microscopes. These technologies use correlated light and electron microscopies for large-scale imaging, spanning the dimensional range and scale of tissue organization to macromolecular specializations of cellular microdomains.
Imaging Instrument Development
The combination of intermediate voltage electron microscopy and electron microscopic tomography remains a focus of NCMIR. With the increasing emphasis on multi-scale integration in biological systems, however, NCMIR has been expanding its activities in correlated microscopy, integrating multi-photon light and ultra high-voltage electron microscopic techniques to accommodate the multi-scale studies being driven by collaboration. To support ultra wide-field imaging, NCMIR continues to build on the success of its ultra large-field lens-coupled CCD camera technologies, pushing the resolution and performance of state-of-the-art digital detectors for high-voltage electron microscopy. As each resource instrument is improved to deliver unique and important new capabilities, each is also being integrated with leading-edge, grid-service-based technologies for generalized Telemicroscopy.
Advanced Software Infrastructure Applications and Database Development
With the development of the Telescience Portal, NCMIR has made significant contributions in the area of grid-enabled environments for end-to-end electron tomography. Many applications have been rewritten in Java and/or modified for web-based operation within a globally distributed grid environment. The Cell Centered Database (CCDB), a sophisticated web-based database management system for 3D microscopies, serves multiple functions, as a data management tool for the resource, as a means to disseminate and share data produced at NCMIR, and as one of a series of linked and federated databases across multiple biological scales as part of the BIRN and Telescience projects.
