MicroCT for Scanning and Analysis of Mouse Bones

1.Do not use boiling or hot agarose. It causes damage to the sample and will negatively affect later histology or mechanical testing.

2.While the principles described here will be instructive for other systems, many of the details are specific to SCANCO microCT systems, and in particular to the system used in our lab (SCANCO μCT 40). At the time of this writing, we were running version 6.4 of the Scanco Tomography program, and version 6.6 of the Scanco Evaluation program.

3.For samples that will go to histology after microCT, minimizing the time from animal death to sample collection is important. The precise time window depends on the downstream staining protocols; the user should consult with histology personnel to determine what is recommended. For example, if immunostaining is planned a short time to dissection (