Quantification of pancreatic islet distribution in situ in mice

Tracing changes of specific cell populations in health and disease is an important goal of biomedical research. Precisely monitoring pancreatic beta-cell proliferation and islet growth is a challenging area of research. We have developed a method to capture the distribution of beta-cells in the intact pancreas of transgenic mice with fluorescence-tagged beta-cells with a macro written for ImageJ (rsb.info.nih.gov/ij/). Total beta-cell area and islet number and size distribution are quantified with reference to specific parameters and location for each islet and for small clusters of beta-cells. The entire distribution of islets can now be plotted in three dimensions, and the information from the distribution on the size and shape of each islet allows a quantitative and a qualitative comparison of changes in overall beta-cell area at a glance.