Clearing-induced tisssue shrinkage: A novel observation of a thickness size effect

R C M Vulders; R C van Hoogenhuizen; E van der Giessen; P J van der Zaag

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0261417

Clearing-induced tisssue shrinkage: A novel observation of a thickness size effect

PLoS One. 2021 Dec 16;16(12):e0261417. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0261417. eCollection 2021.

Authors

R C M Vulders¹, R C van Hoogenhuizen², E van der Giessen³, P J van der Zaag¹

Affiliations

¹ Philips Research Laboratories, Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
² Fontys University of Applied Sciences, Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
³ Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands.

Abstract

The use of clearing agents has provided new insights in various fields of medical research (developmental biology, neurology) by enabling examination of tissue architecture in 3D. One of the challenges is that clearing agents induce tissue shrinkage and the shrinkage rates reported in the literature are incoherent. Here, we report that for a classical clearing agent, benzyl-alcohol benzyl-benzoate (BABB), the shrinkage decreases significantly with increasing sample size, and present an analytical formula describing this.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Animals
Benzoates / pharmacology*
Benzyl Alcohol / pharmacology*
Brain / drug effects
Humans
Imaging, Three-Dimensional / methods*
Liver / drug effects
Male
Optical Imaging / methods*
Prostate / drug effects
Rats
Solvents / pharmacology*
Spleen / drug effects
Swine
Tissue Fixation / methods

Substances

Benzoates
Solvents
Benzyl Alcohol
benzyl benzoate

Grants and funding

Royal Philips N.V. provided support in the form of salaries for RV and PJZ. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section. The funders had no role in study design, data collection, and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.