We took images at 10X of tissue from the central nucleus (CeA) of the amygdala, but those images included tissue outside of the CeA. In order to simplify things and keep from having to re-image everything, is it acceptable to digitally magnify these images 2X (to end up with 20X images that only consist of CeA tissue)? I think I have seen this in a methods section before, but I am having trouble finding the article, so any citations would be greatly appreciated!
No problems. Just do not forget to magnify a scale bar. In publications (whether printed or posted on Internet) all images are magnified/ demagnified anyway.
In general, you can, but digital enlargement will increase only the physical size of the picture, not the resolution, so describing them as 20x images instead of 10x will be misleading (it will still be a 10x picture, just digitally blown to double its size, it will not increase the visibility of the fine details). And as it was mentioned in other answers - proper scale bar is a must.
Taking care of clarity, focus and scale bar is extremely important as said by other researchers. Good luck
- Badges
- Science method