[Histonet] viability stain for 450 micron brain slices

[HENKEN,KIRSTEN RUTH]

I am looking for a staining technique to test the viability of 
slices of the rat brain after some force-displacement tests on the 
tissue. As I am an engineer and no chemist I do not know what kind 
of stain would be appropriate. We keep the slices from the 
cerebral cortex and the corpus callosumalive alive in a tissue 
chamber with ACSF that is bubbled with 95% O2/ 5% CO2. The slices 
have a thickness of 450 micron and there is a fluorescent confocal 
microscope available. As this microscope is away from the testing 
site and we do not have the equipment that can keep the tissue 
alive during imaging, it would be very convenient to fix the 
tissue after staining. Does anyone of you have experience with a 
staining technique that is suitable for my experiment?

Best, Kirsten Henken