Ipsilateral vs Contralateral in imaging

Wondering if anyone has any techniques to identify the ipsilateral side of the spinal cord without having to cut the tissue before staining. I’ve heard that GFAP is more abundant in the ventral horn on the ipsilateral side and this is usually a good marker, as well as Iba-1 in dorsal horn. Any other ideas for identifying ipsilateral side?

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Use a 30g needle to poke a hole in the ventral side of contralateral. Do this when your cord is mounted on your cyrostat. I wouldn’t depend on a marker to let you know which side is ipsi.

@ShanTan and if you’re doing mounted tissue, if you pay attention to orientation when you mount, you can know which side is ipsi. That’s takes some focus. It’s probably easier to just use the needle trick. You need to redo the needle poke after a few slices.

This is great, thank you @achamess. I’ve been using a blade to cut the ventral horn of the contralateral side… this is difficult and I wind up damaging more than I want to. I’ll try the needle trick!