Imaging

The triumph of reductionistic approaches in biomedical research has yielded unprecedented knowledge of the components involved biological processes, and now poses the challenge of integrating this knowledge into a complete understanding. For example, the revolution in molecular biology has yielded dramatic new insights into the genes and gene products that might guide embryonic development. To answer the basic question of how an embryo develops, we must determine how these molecular processes are assembled into the working macroscopic entities we call organisms.

Biological imaging provides a natural solution to such challenges, but must resolve several competing demands, including: the high resolution needed to track single cells; the challenge of imaging cells in their normal positions in vivo; the need for true volumetric imaging; the wide field of view needed to place these images in context. No single technique has yet offered the needed combination of attributes, making our present challenge to integrate data from different modalities. I will draw on new findings from the Biological Imaging Center, using intravital imaging to attack problems ranging from the early induction of the nervous system to the patterning of the heart, to illustrate the current state of our misunderstandings and of the imaging technologies that may resolve them.