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Dear all,

For Theresa, Stephen, Mario and all the others: Thank you for the good
thougths about this topic. I hope you get even more ideas when I explain the
measurements a little bit further.
We are measuring on a glass slide on several places and collect Z-stacks of
the forming biofilm at these places. The point is that we want to measure
influences of light, season and temperature on the development of the
biofilms. We are not interested, at the moment in getting very nice
pictures, but just want to quantify the effects of light and so on. We have
software to analyse the stacks 2D (areas) of three channels and combine that
with the z-steps to 3D (volume) numbers. The main parameter we measure in a
slice is (the percentage of) the area which is covered by the biofilm. To
see what the influence of for instance light is, it is not necessary to do
z-sampling according to Nyquist I think.
But what is important to quantify the effects of several treatments? Is it
just a matter of statistics? Can we say for instance, we are going to
measure each time at 5 points in z: if the biofilm is 50 micron thick than
we measure at 0, 10, 20, 30 and 40 micron? Or are there other criteria which
are important? I am interested in your ideas about this.

A merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of you!

With kind regards,

Anita Wijnholds