Viral tracers are widely used to map neural connectivity. A typical workflow has five steps:
- Injection: stereotaxic delivery of viral vector to a target brain region
- Expression: wait days to weeks for fluorescent reporter expression
- Sectioning: serial cryosection or vibratome slicing of the brain
- Scanning: PanoBrain images each section with automated fluorescence acquisition
- Analysis: quantify labeled cells (retrograde tracers) or labeled axons (anterograde tracers) per brain region to map inputs and projection targets