Miniscope V4
Founding developer Daniel Aharoni
$1,995.00 USD
The V4 is a leap forward in miniscope technology. It will serve as the platform for a new generation of miniscopes for years to come. This high-end solution will help to advance and disseminate miniature microscopy to the fast increasing open-source neuroscience community.
Significant contributors to the V4 were also the Cai and Shuman labs at Mount Sinai, and the Blair lab at UCLA. It builds on the Golshani, Silva, and Khakh UCLA labs' initiative coordinated by Daniel Aharoni of making Mark Schnitzer's pioneering invention (Nature Methods 2011) open source.
Miniscope V4 uses wide-field fluorescence imaging to record neural activity in awake, freely moving mice. V4 miniscopes from LabMaker come fully-assembled, tested, and ready to use. It is compatible with the Data Acquisition System (DAQ) with V4 firmware.
KEY FEATURES
- >1mm diameter field of view
- ~1mm working distance
- with electronic focal adjustment of +/-200um with electrowetting lens; no more mechanical sliding in order to focus
- all high resolution achromatic optics (no internal GRIN lens)
- 2.6 grams, 22 mm tall
- absolute head orientation sensor
- requires ~1/5th the excitation power of previous systems
- still uses only a single coaxial cable (down to 0.3mm in diameter) for power, communication, and data.
CONTENTS
- Fully-assembled and tested Miniscope V4
- Lens configuration 1
- Corning (Varioptics) 2.5mm clear aperture electrowetting lens
- aluminium objective sleeve for easy, repeated mounting (for base plate variant 2)
- 2 separate base plate variant 2 with screws
- 300 cm coaxial cable, 1 mm diameter, Hirose U.FL connector
FULFILLMENT
The current lead-time of new orders for Miniscope V4 is 6-8 weeks from the date of ordering.
USING A MINISCOPE
is straightforward when you follow the detailed UCLA step-by-step instructions. (requires prior registration with miniscope.org)
Experimental timeline (by Denise Cai)
- A-100 Miniscope recording on a linear track
- A-110 Imaging GCamp6F in CA1 using the miniscope
- B-100 Imaging a test slide expressing TetTag GFP
- B-110 Miniscope baseplate preparation
- B-120 Miniscope baseplate surgery
- B-130 Handling the animal for miniscope attachment
- B-140 Attaching the miniscope
- B-150 Removing the miniscope
- B-160 Setting miniscope focus height
- PP - GRIN lens implantation surgery
- PP - Image processing and analysis
- Workshop: Imaging Principles and Microscope Design (5.1GB)
- Working with animal behavior [login to miniscope.org beforehand]
PUBLICATION
Zhe Dong, William Mau, Yu (Susie) Feng, Zachary T. Pennington, Lingxuan Chen, Yosif Zaki, Kanaka Rajan, Tristan Shuman, Daniel Aharoni, Denise J. Cai (2021). Minian: An open-source miniscope analysis pipeline. BioRxiv.
