Three-dimensional label-free histological imaging of whole organs by microtomy-assisted autofluorescence tomography

Abstract

Three-dimensional (3D) histology is vitally important to characterize disease-induced tissue heterogeneity at the individual cell level. However, it remains a scientific challenge for both high-quality 3D imaging and volumetric reconstruction. Here we propose a label-free, automated, and ready-to-use 3D histological imaging technique, termed microtomy-assisted autofluorescence tomography with ultraviolet excitation (MATE). With the combination of block-face imaging and serial microtome sectioning, MATE can achieve rapid and label-free imaging of paraffin-embedded whole organs at an acquisition speed of 1 cm3 per 4 hours with a voxel resolution of 1.2 x 1.2 x 10 m3. We demonstrate that MATE enables simultaneous visualization of cell nuclei, fiber tracts, and blood vessels in mouse/human brains without tissue staining or clearing. Moreover, diagnostic features, such as nuclear size and packing density, can be quantitatively extracted with high accuracy. MATE is augmented to the current slide-based 2D histology, holding great promise for facilitating histopathological interpretation at the cell level to analyze complex tissue heterogeneity in 3D. Significance StatementConventional 3D histology based on spatial registration of serial histochemically-stained thin tissue slices is fundamentally labor-intensive and inaccurate. Here, we propose a rapid and label-free 3D histological imaging technique (i.e., MATE) that enables high-resolution imaging of complex whole organs without tissue staining or clearing. MATE is fully automated to provide a series of distortion- and registration-free images with intrinsic absorption-based contrast, demonstrating great potential as a routine tissue analysis tool that can seamlessly fit into the current clinical practice to facilitate the applications of histopathological interpretation at the subcellular level.