About the Authors

Yoshihiro Kawano

yoshihiro.kawano@olympus.com

Affiliation Olympus America, Center Valley, Pennsylvania, United States of America

Christopher Higgins

Affiliation Olympus America, Center Valley, Pennsylvania, United States of America

Yasuhito Yamamoto

Affiliation Olympus Corporation, Hachioji, Tokyo, Japan

Julie Nyhus

Affiliation Allen Institute for Brain Science, Seattle, Washington, United States of America

Amy Bernard

Affiliation Allen Institute for Brain Science, Seattle, Washington, United States of America

Hong-Wei Dong

Affiliation David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, United States of America

Harvey J. Karten

Affiliation Department of Neurosciences, School of Medicine, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America

Tobias Schilling

Affiliation Olympus Soft Imaging Solutions GmbH, Münster, Germany

Competing Interests

Olympus America Inc. provided microscope equipment but was not a funder of, and did not influence the outcome of, the study. The VS120 WSI scanning system was used. Yoshihiro Kawano and Christopher Higgins are employed by Olympus America, Yasuhito Yamamoto by Olympus Corporation and Tobias Schilling by Olympus Soft Imaging Solutions GmbH. Thomas Geer of Olympus America provided advice and counsel and Tatsuo Nirei of Olympus Engineering prepared the prototype stage modifications used in this study. Lorne D. Davies, Olympus America Inc. and I have filed a US patent application entitled: WIDE FIELD MICROSCOPIC IMAGING SYSTEM AND METHOD (publication number US2012/0092477 published on April 19 2012, date of filing October 18, 2010). Olympus Corporation introduced a darkfield illuminator in October 2012. However, this commercially available product is not the same as our prototype. There are no further patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter the authors’ adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, as detailed online in the guide for authors.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: YK CH YY HK. Performed the experiments: YK CH JN. Analyzed the data: YK CH AB HWD HK. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: YK CH HK AB HWD HK TS. Wrote the paper: YK CH HK AB HWD HK TS.