The surface of a brachiopod embryo

This is a brachiopod embryo at the gastrula stage, showing its outer surface and the blastopore at the bottom.

To visualize the cell membranes, I stained the sample for F-actin (filamentous protein fibers present in cells) and acquired a volumetric image stack in a confocal microscope.

Then, I converted the original data to a 3D animation using ImageJ’s 3D Project function.

This image is part of the segmentation chapter of my PhD, and it was published here: https://doi.org/10.1038/srep32387