Images of the stained matrix were acquired using a digital camera.
The cells were embedded in a 3D collagen matrix and acquired using an Olympus FluoView F1000 laser scanning confocal microscope (courtesy of Prof R. Kamm, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA).
Bright-field (cells) and fluorescence (matrices) images were acquired using Nikon TE300 Inverted Fluorescent Microscope (Nikon Inc., Melville, NY) equipped with image acquisition and processing software, MetaVue (Molecular Devices, Downingtown, PA).
The scanning parameters were as follows: repetition time (TR) = 2.5 s, time echo (TE) = 30 ms, flip angle: 90°, slice thickness: 3.4 mm no gap, field of view (FOV) 200 mm, 32 slices; data were acquired using 96×9696 matrix (in plane resolution 2.08 × 2.08 mm), reconstruct into 128 × 128 matrix (in plane resolution 1.56 × 1.56 mm).
Each functional volume existed of 34 axial slices (3.2 mm thickness, 64×64 matrix, 3.125×3.125 mm per voxel), acquired using echo-planar imaging (2000 ms TR, 30 ms TE, 79° flip angle, 200 mm field of view, 0 slice gap, with AC-PC on the 11th slice from the bottom).
PET data were acquired using a matrix of 128 × 128 pixels.
After a 45 60 min uptake period, CT acquisition was performed on spiral dual slice CT with a slice thickness of 4 mm and a pitch of 1. Images were acquired using a matrix of 512 × 512 pixels and pixel size of about 1 mm.
Data were acquired using 64 × 64 matrices in a 15%% energy window centred on the 140 keV photopeak.
Genotypes were acquired using a chip-based matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF) mass spectrometer.
SPECT data were acquired using the following parameters: 128×128 matrix, rotation of 360°, 60 view, 6° view angle, 45 s for projection.
