The Mini2P - The Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience
Mini2P - the brain explorer!
Mini2P is an open-source miniature 2-photon microscope brain explorer for fast high-resolution calcium imaging in freely-moving mice.
Say hello to Mini2P
In brief
Development of a miniature 2-photon miniscope for large-scale calcium imaging in freely moving mice allows stable simultaneous recording of more than a thousand cells across multiple planes of densely active cortical regions in a wide spectrum of behavioral tasks without impediment of the animal's behavior.
Highlights
- We made a light-weight 2-photon miniscope for calcium imaging in freely moving mice
- Stable high-quality imaging was observed during a wide spectrum of behaviours
- Activity can be monitored in volumes of over 1,000 visual or entorhinal-cortex cells
- A custom-designed z-scanning module allows fast imaging across multiple planes
Graphical abstract
The Mini2P assembly tutorial
Build your Mini2P
Mini2P is open source and available on GitHub
Mini2P is a complete open-source project, we encourage people to use, test, modify and further develop this toolbox.
Mini2P_toolbox on GitHub includes the codes, softwares, 3D models, protocols, and etc. for building and using Mini2P to do freely-moving recording.
Read the paper in Cell
Mini2P is created by Weijian Zong et al. at the Moser group at Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience in Trondheim:
Zong, et al.,"Large-scale two-photon calcium imaging in freely moving mice" Cell (2022).
Workshop
1st international Mini2P workshop
Dec 2022: We learned to build and use the Mini2P for three days in lovely Trondheim with Weijian Zong and the team at Kavli Institute. The workshop covered all aspects of Mini2P development, assembly, image acquisition, baseplating and use of the miniscope in freely-moving mice.
Contact authors
Connect with the Mini2P team
Questions? Suggestions? Found bugs in the codes?
Get in touch with the Mini2P team headquartered at The Kavli Institute at NTNU in Trondheim: Join the Slack-team!
