Two-Dimensional Mapping of 3D Data from Confocal Microscopy

Confocal microscopy has been experimentally proven for decades to provide high-quality images for biological research. Its unique property of blocking out-of-focus light enables 3D rendering from planar stacks and visualization of internal features. However, visualizing 3D data on a flat display is not intuitive, and would lead to occasional distortion. In this study, a novel, easy-to-implement, and computationally fast solution is provided to reconstruct a confocal stack to true 3D data and subsequently map the information correctly with size and shape consistency to a 2D space for visualization and image analysis purposes.