But Does It Come with a Corkscrew and Tweezers?

Researchers at HHMI's Janelia Farm are unveiling a new suite of software tools designed to better visualize, analyze, and measure complex 3D biological and biomedical images. The software package, called V3D, is being distributed free of charge to researchers around the world. HHMI says the tools could help speed up a user's ability to assemble and manipulate extremely detailed images. Led by Hanchuan Peng, the team built a V3D application called V3D-Neuron to demonstrate the software's extensibility. The application reconstructs complex 3D neuronal structures from high-resolution brain images. According to the study, published in Nature Biotechnology, V3D-Neuron can precisely digitize the morphology of a single neuron in a fruit fly's brain in minutes, with about 17 times improvement in reliability and tenfold savings in time compared with other neuron reconstruction tools. The researchers say the software is a kind of "Swiss Army knife" as it contains important and useful tools.