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Updated: Sep 22, 2025
3D Imaging of Soft-Tissue Samples using an X-ray Specific Staining Method and Nanoscopic Computed Tomography
Published on: October 24, 2019
Three-Dimensional Super-Resolved Imaging of Paraffin-Embedded Kidney Samples
David Unnersjö-Jess1,2, Amer Ramdedovic1,2, Martin Höhne1,2
1Department II of Internal Medicine and Center for Molecular Medicine Cologne (CMMC), University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
Background:
Diseases of the glomeruli, the renal filtration units, are a leading cause of progressive kidney disease. Assessment of the ultrastructure of podocytes at the glomerular filtration barrier is essential for diagnosing diverse disease entities, providing insight into the disease pathogenesis, and monitoring treatment responses.
Methods:
Here we apply previously published sample preparation methods together with stimulated emission depletion and confocal microscopy for resolving nanoscale podocyte substructure. The protocols are modified and optimized in order to be applied to formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) samples.
Results:
We successfully modified our protocols to allow for deep three-dimensional stimulated emission depletion and confocal imaging of FFPE kidney tissue with similar staining and image quality compared with our previous approaches. We further show that quantitative analysis can be applied to extract morphometrics from healthy and diseased samples from both mice and humans.
Conclusions:
The results from this study could increase the feasibility of implementing optical kidney imaging protocols in clinical routines because FFPE is the gold-standard method for storage of patient samples.
