The Dean Lab at UTSW

An expanded mouse lung imaged with Axially Swept Light-Sheet Microscopy

The Dean Lab is a multi-disciplinary team of biologists, chemists, physicists, and engineers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. We develop advanced microscopy technologies to study cellular signaling processes in complex tissue contexts. Our goal is to understand how cells make decisions in the context of their native environment, and how these decisions go awry in disease. More information about our research can be found on our website.

Projects

  • Light-sheet microscopy software packages for intelligent imaging of complex tissue samples

  • Tissue clearing and labeling protocols for high-resolution imaging deep within biological specimens.

  • Cost-effective, easy-to-assemble, and performant light-sheet microscopes for interrogating live cells, expanded, and cleared tissue samples.

Educational Resources

  • CI2023 - An introduction to continuous integration and continuous deployment for scientific software.

Publication Repositories

For many manuscripts published over the years, we provide access to CAD files, software, and data via GitHub. These repositories are organized by publication year.

  • 2015, Dean - Deconvolution-free subcellular imaging with axially swept light sheet microscopy.

  • 2016, Dean - Diagonally scanned light-sheet microscopy for fast volumetric imaging of adherent cells.

  • 2016, Welf - Quantitative multiscale cell imaging in controlled 3D microenvironments.

  • 2019, Chakraborty - Light-sheet microscopy of cleared tissues with isotropic, subcellular resolution.

  • 2020, Chang - Systematic and quantitative comparison of lattice and Gaussian light-sheets.

  • 2020, Sapoznik - A versatile oblique plane microscope for large-scale and high-resolution imaging of subcellular dynamics.

  • 2021, Chang - Real-time multi-angle projection imaging of biological dynamics.

  • 2022, Dean - Isotropic imaging across spatial scales with axially swept light-sheet microscopy.

  • 2022, Chang - Resolution doubling in light-sheet microscopy via oblique plane structured illumination.

  • 2023, Chang - Projective oblique plane structured illumination microscopy.

  • TBD, Isogai - Direct Arp2/3-vinculin binding is essential for cell spreading, but only on compliant substrates and in 3D.

Funding

The Dean Lab is supported by the following funding sources:

Software