Aligning Serial Sections from a Live Image
How do I align a new tissue section with the tracing of the previous section?
- Select Move>Joy Free.
- Move the stage with the joystick until the tissue is approximately aligned with the tracing of the previous section.
- Focus on the top of the section, right-click and select End Joy Free.
- Refine the alignment with one of these tools:
- Tools>Match: Easiest method to obtain a quick fit between the tissue and the tracing. Applies to all sections, visible and hidden.
- Move>Align Tracing: Moves the tracing in the X, Y and/or Z-axis, but does not rotate the tracing. Applies to all sections, visible and hidden.
- Tools>Rotate Tracing: Only rotates visible sections.
- To make all sections visible, disable Display Current Section Only
in the Serial Section Manager.
- To make all sections visible, disable Display Current Section Only
After aligning the second section, the reference point is not in its original location with regard to the tissue. This is because the Align and Match functions move the entire tracing but not the reference point. The reference point is only an accurate locator of a point on your tissue in the first section of a stack. When returning to subsequent sections after closing the file, you need to manually align the tissue with the stack of tracings.