Dear John,

presenting the single channels in greyscale is the most sensible way to
go. The red-green merge does not make much sense to show evidence for
colocalization, you need proper numbers (Pearson, Manders coefficient
etc.). A black and white table/chart can be read by color-blind people
without problems.

Follow the link to a presentation about that, if you are interested:
https://ifn.mpi-cbg.de/wiki/ifn/images/1/1e/QuantitativeColocAnalysis0709small.pdf

Michael


> Dear list,
>
> While preparing some confocal imaging results for publication just
> recently, I was informed by one of my PhD committee members that I
> should try to present my multi-dimensional microscopy images in such
> a way that they are easy to see by people who are color blind. Ie:
> you should choose colors for your single monochrome channel images
> such that when viewed in a merged/overlay image they convey the same
> information as you would see in a standard green/red overlay image
> for colocalization, etc. I've tried to read up a bit on this topic on
> the web and I even searched the confocal listserv archive, but I
> could find no definitive set of rules or guidelines for going about
> this. The only discussion I could find about this on the listserv
> dates back to 1996 and given that imaging has become even more
> prevalent in today's biological sciences since then, I'm wondering if
> anyone on here now can direct me to a good source or set of journal
> guidelines for publishing color image overlays bearing in mind that
> some of the readers will be color blind . Also, does anyone know of
> any image processing utilities or plugins (ImageJ?) that can covert a
> full color image into a version that is easier to interpret by
> someone who is color blind?
>
> I've come to realize this is even more important than I previously
> thought given that it seems that almost 1 in 10 males worldwide is
> color blind (the occurrence of color blindness is said to be lower in
> females). Actually, if you want to learn more about the topic of how
> humans perceive color and the history of making colors, I highly
> recommend a BBC documentary I came across just yesterday called
> "Cracking the Colour Code". Very entertaining.
>
> John Oreopoulos
>
> PS: I used both spellings of the word color in the subject line so
> that others can find this thread easily in the future.