Processing live images of the developing nervous system

了解发育是了解有机体功能的关键一步。了解动物发育的一个关键方面需要能够在发育过程中观察蛋白质如何相互作用，以及它们如何在细胞内和细胞之间产生有助于协调发育的信号。 一个强有力的工具是使用荧光标记附着在活细胞或组织的蛋白质上来研究发育。 这些标签的颜色范围很广，从蓝色、绿色、橙子、黄色、红色甚至远红色。 这意味着研究人员可以在活细胞中同时研究许多蛋白质，以获得这些蛋白质如何相互作用以及它们产生什么信号的清晰图像。 例如，在神经系统的发育过程中，可以研究细胞如何迁移或延伸过程到它们在神经系统中的最终位置。通过跟踪细胞如何在真实的时间（即活的）中移动和发出信号，提供了比传统的将细胞固定在适当位置的方法更多的关于如何控制发育的信息。对于这些方法，需要在发育中的细胞或组织内对这些蛋白质进行成像。一个专门的显微镜，使用高放大倍数，但可以检测微弱的信号，而不杀死细胞是必不可少的。Deltavision显微镜是一个很好的例子，该系统允许活细胞成像数小时而没有任何损坏，并允许在同一个细胞中跟踪许多标记。然而，该系统需要一个单独的，快速的，功能强大的计算机来快速处理图像，以允许高分辨率的数字图像被有效地处理。

Understanding development is a critical step in understanding how an organism functions. One of the key aspects of understanding animal development requires the ability to watch during development how proteins interact with each other and how they generate signals within and between cells that help coordinate development. A powerful tool to do this is to use fluorescent tags attached to proteins with a live cell or tissue to study development. These tags come in a wide range of colour from blue, green, orange, yellow, red and even far-red. This means that researchers can study many proteins at the same time in a living cell to obtain a clear picture on how these proteins interact and what signals they generate. For instance, during the development of the nervous system, how cells migrate or extend processes to their final positions in the nervous system can be investigated. By following how cells move and signal in real time (i.e. live) provides far more information about how development is controlled than traditional approaches that fixed the cell in place. For these approaches, imaging these proteins within developing cells or tissues is required. A specialized microscope that uses high magnification but can detect faint signals without killing the cells is essential. The Deltavision microscope is an excellent example of a system that allows live cells to be imaged for hours without any damage and allows many labels to be followed in the same cell. However this system needs a separate, fast, powerful computer to manipulate the images rapidly to allow for high resolution digital images to be processed efficiently.