Home

Welcome to the Crosshair user guide!

More information

There is also a step by step video tutorial (demonstrated on the EMBL system, built on a Leica UC7 ultramicrotome) available to watch on YouTube. For more details of how Crosshair works, see our paper in eLife or our preprint on bioRxiv.

Motorised vs standard ultramicrotomes

Crosshair was designed to be used with a motorised ultamicrotome. Plans / parts lists are available online for the Crick system (built on an RMC ultramicrotome) and the EMBL system (built on a Leica UC7 ultramicrotome).

This being said, it is also possible to use Crosshair with any standard (non-motorised) ultramicrotome - although the targeting accuracy will be reduced! This can be useful if you don't require the highest possible precision, or if you want to try out the targeting workflow before building or purchasing a motorised ultramicrotome.

Step by step user guide

We've made a short step by step guide of how to use the Crosshair plugin:

1. Targeting workflow overview
2. Opening an image
3. Interface basics
4. Setting up planes
5. Assigning vertices
6. Microtome mode
7. Cutting mode
8. Saving and loading
9. Measuring targeting accuracy