combined lens/baseplate ideas?

[demo...@gmail.com]

Hi Everyone - 

Has anyone thought about a way to mount a relay lens into a v4 baseplate, similar to what Inscopix has done with their ProView lenses?

If this works, it would theoretically be possible to have a 1-step implant process: coat the lens with silk+virus, connect the baseplate+probe to the scope, implant and cement everything simultaneously.  Added bonus that the virus is where it should be relative to the lens and the baseplate is where it should be to align the scope and lens.

I might see if anyone in my group is interested in playing around with this idea, but I wanted to check with the user community to see if anyone has tried first.  Any warnings or pointers?  Anything that makes this impossible?

Thanks for any ideas and thanks for the awesome open-source tools and community contributions - 

-  David

[Daniel Aharoni]

Hi David,

I think this should definitely be doable. If you have any specific questions let me know. 

[demo...@gmail.com]

Hi Daniel and group - 

Thanks for the support on this idea. 

Ariel Burman, a (n awesome) researcher on our team, used Daniel's baseplate model (thanks for sharing) to make a prototype of a baseplate with a lens sleeve.  I'm attaching a design image and a photo of some pilot 3D prints from a Form2. 

Ariel also put SCAD and STL files on GitHub (https://github.com/moormanlab/miniscope-goodies/). 

A couple of thoughts/questions:

1)    We are going to test lens fit soon, but we wanted to get the images and files out there ASAP so we could crowdsource improvements.

2)    Does anyone see concerns with having a flat bottom on the baseplate?  Could this scratch the objective lens on the miniscope or be a problem otherwise? 

3)    Does anyone have ideas on how high up the relay lens should project from the base of the baseplate to optimally interface with the scope?  This might have to be experimentally determined, but maybe there are some guidelines about how close you want the relay lens to the objective lens in the scope, etc.

4)    The design might need better resolution than we can get on our printer – it might need to be machined, etc.  Suggestions along those lines are welcome.

5)    Side note - Ariel made ridges in the flanges to make them more "grippy" in dental cement.  That’s optional, of course. 

Please feel free to give us any feedback and/or download the design files and make improvements.  Hopefully we can get this to the point that it’s reliably useful for everyone.  We’re excited about the possibility of using these in the lab.

[Daniel Aharoni]

This design looks great!

2. I would suggest making the inside pocket of this baseplate slightly deeper than the depth of the Miniscope objective part. This way you can be sure that the Miniscope is repeatably hitting the hard stop of the top of the baseplate instead of sometime pushing the bottom lens against the baseplate. On average there will be around 700um of gap between the top of the relay grin lens and the bottom lens of the Miniscope objective so there is room to add a ~500um gap anyways.

3. As I mentioned above, there normally will be a gap of between 500um to 800um between the top of the relay lens and the bottom of the Miniscope. This exact gap will be dependent on the specs of the relay lens and the precise position of all the internal optics of the Miniscope. I would generally suggest looking in a Miniscope into the baseplate and then positioning the relay lens while testing the imaging on a fluorescent slide. Once things look correct you could glue the grin in place. Likely once you do this a few times there might be a clear repeatable position of the grin lens that works well and you could stop imaging while mounting the grin into the baseplate.

4. We have a couple Form 3 printers in my lab that we can try printing these on. They should work pretty well for initial prototyping and we could ship you back some. In the end, I think machining out of aluminum is the way to go and you can reach out to Shylo (shylostiteler_at_gmail_dot_com) who does almost all machining for all Miniscope parts.

[Sylar Grayson]

Hi，

Our lab has successfully designed and tested one in vitro. The lens were provided by inscopix. The combined baseplate and lens requires a high precision, so we contact a factory and choose CNC to make sure a high resolution and precision. The gap between the lens and v4 is ~500um. However, we don't glue the lens, instead, we clamp it.

Kaii

NeuroInformation ENG Lab, Southern Medical University

[David Moorman]

This looks great!  Thanks for showing it to us.  The use of a clamp is a very creative solution.  

Let us know if you don't mind sharing the design or the factory where you had it made.  We would be happy to buy some pieces to try out ourselves if possible.

Either way, the comment that ~500 um distance is the optimal gap and the idea of clamping instead of gluing are very helpful.  Thanks again!

- David

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Miniscope" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to miniscope+...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/miniscope/f4ef7f44-beb4-4bf2-94ae-53560686c446n%40googlegroups.com.