The development occurring in the platform MEC is tighly associated with joint effort with the “platform of nanocaractérisation” (PFNC) from CEA, leading to have a unique expertise in 3D electron microscopy of large tissue volumes reaching tens of thousands of cubic micrometers at the nanometer scale. This is essential to analyze rare events and true 3D morphological details in neurobiology to study finely cell connectivity, the characterization of membrane structures in chloroplasts from algae and plants, or to study nanoparticles toxicity. Indeed, EM stacks are acquired with much less efforts than by serial sectioning and in a relatively short time (preparation of the sample 3 days, acquisition of the stack 1 day due to high quality stabilization of the samples) new biological questions of interest to the FBI community can be addressed.
Moreover, we have developed a unique pipe-line of analysis of large stacks of 3D EM images. This pipe-line is composed of segmentation steps followed by Ilastik approach for recognition of objects of interests coupled with a serie of home-made plugin specific for quantification. As requested by the network of French electronic microscopists, we are actively collaborating to make available our process to make this pipe-line available for others colleagues and especially the FBI users, as requested by the network of French electronic microscopists. Our work allowed us to develop international collaboration with Andrea Volterra, a world-class leader in the field of FIB-SEM in Neurobiology.