Custom wide-field detector at APS 2-BM

A whole octopus, imaged continuously at submicron scale.

A 10 mm field of view at 0.7 µm isotropic voxels reveals intact neural architecture in a hatchling Octopus bimaculoides, from sucker-associated tracts to the arm-body transition zone.

Open interactive specimen See the neural findings

10 mmsoft-tissue microCT field of view

0.7 µmisotropic voxel sampling

300+segmented structures across organ systems

2 scansartifact-corrected and stitched into one volume

The technical advance

Submicron sampling without giving up organism-scale context.

Soft-tissue microCT usually trades field of view for resolution. The APS 2-BM wide-field detector extends histotomography into a centimeter-scale field while preserving histology-like contrast for intact biological specimens.

The result is a whole-organism volume that keeps long-range anatomy continuous. Instead of reconstructing a picture from disconnected fragments, viewers can move through the same intact specimen from arms and suckers to the nerve ring and central brain.

APS 2-BMparallel-beam synchrotron acquisition

9001projections per tomographic acquisition

26 keVbeam energy used for the poster dataset

Wide-field detector and APS 2-BM imaging geometry poster panel — Custom detector assembly and sample geometry used for centimeter-scale soft-tissue microCT at APS 2-BM.

Detector to digital specimen

A beamline-to-browser workflow for intact anatomy.

Acquisition, correction, reconstruction, segmentation, and web release are treated as one continuous pipeline, because each step affects whether long-range relationships remain interpretable.

Field-of-view comparison for wide-field microCT acquisition

Wide-field acquisition

The detector captures a field large enough for the intact hatchling while retaining submicron sampling for microanatomy.

Movement-corrected microCT reconstruction showing restored soft tissue detail

Artifact correction

Sample drift, stripes, and ring-like artifacts are corrected so tissue boundaries and tract continuity remain readable.

Neuroglancer splash view for the open web specimen

Open web release

The multi-terabyte specimen is released through browser-based viewers so attendees and collaborators can inspect the live volume.

Biological payoff

Whole-animal continuity exposes neural relationships that fragmented preparations lose.

The octopus is a demanding test case because its arm nervous system, inter-arm commissures, and brain-bound tracts only make sense when they can be followed through the intact arm-body junction.

Rendering of sucker-associated longitudinal tracts and the cerebrobrachial tract — Paired oral-root-associated longitudinal tracts run near sucker nerve roots while remaining distinct from the aboral CBT.

Sucker-associated longitudinal tracts remain distinct from the CBT.

Longitudinal renderings show paired oral-root-associated longitudinal tracts within the axial nerve cord neuropil. They run parallel to the cerebrobrachial tract, repeatedly associate with oral nerve roots at successive suckers, and remain spatially separate over much of the arm.

CBT oRLTs oral nerves sucker ganglion

En face view of repeated arm-to-arm U-tracts in the octopus nerve ring — Repeated arm-to-arm U-tracts link immediately neighboring arms through the interbrachial commissures.

Neighboring arms are linked by repeated U-shaped fascicles.

Within the nerve ring, arm-to-arm U-tracts form a repeated motif around adjacent arm bases. These fascicles follow a U-shaped route from one arm toward the next, rather than jumping between distant arms.

AAUT nerve ring

Whole-animal rendering of brachial nerve and cerebrobrachial tract transition zone — Sucker-associated, inter-arm, and arm-brain pathways meet within a shared proximal transition zone.

A shared transition zone brings multiple pathways into contact.

At the proximal arm-body junction, the brachial nerve and CBT form a transition zone. oRLTs approach from the axial nerve cord neuropil and enter the oral-medial brachial nerve, while AAUT fascicles enter laterally and continue into lateral CBT components.

transition zone brachial nerve CBT AAUT

Poster abstract

A custom wide-field detector at APS 2-BM reveals whole-organism neural architecture in an intact octopus.

Andrew Sugarman, Daniel Vanselow, David Northover, Stephen L. Senft, Carolyn Zaino, Maksim A. Yakovlev, Jessica Christ, Justin D. Silverman, Mee S. Ngu, Khai C. Ang, Steve Wang, Wen-Sung Chung, Patrick La Riviere, Roger T. Hanlon, Keith C. Cheng

Submicron soft-tissue microCT usually trades field of view for resolution, limiting intact-organism imaging. We developed and deployed a custom wide-field detector at APS 2-BM that extends soft-tissue microCT to a 10 mm field of view at 0.7 µm isotropic voxels.

Using two scans and artifact-corrected reconstruction, we generated a whole-organism volume of an intact hatchling Octopus bimaculoides with histology-like soft-tissue contrast and segmented more than 300 structures across organ systems.

The octopus provides a demanding biological test because intact whole-animal continuity reveals long-range relationships that are lost in fragmented preparations, including paired sucker-associated longitudinal tracts in the axial nerve cord, repeated neighboring-arm fascicles within the nerve ring, and a proximal brachial nerve/cerebrobrachial tract transition zone.

The multi-terabyte dataset is being released as an open, interactive digital specimen, illustrating how APS-enabled wide-field microCT can connect detector development, beamline acquisition, reconstruction, and biological discovery.

For poster attendees

Step from the QR code into the specimen.

Open the Neuroglancer viewer to inspect the volume directly, or start from the Octo9 landing page for the broader data release. The most useful first move is to follow a nerve bundle from an arm into the proximal transition zone.

Launch Neuroglancer Open Octo9 dataset page