OCM images have been taken of frogs (Xenopus laevis) at several stages of development. The frog embryos have been provided by our collaborators in the laboratory of Professor Scott Fraser at Caltech in Pasadena just 30 minutes away. The process of gastrulation occurs during developmental stages 10 through 13 (roughly 10-15 hours post fertilization). Andy Schile ('01), an HMC biology major, acquired many successive 3-D images of gastrulation, at time intervals of ten minutes, and spliced them together to form time-lapse movies. Each frame has been created by "volume-rendering" a 3-D dataset onto a 2-D viewing screen. The volume imaged of each movie is indicated in parentheses (width x height x depth) before each link.

The time-lapse movies available below were made using QuickTime 4.0. To view them you must have the free Quicktime Plug-in, available at http://www.quicktime.com.