Comparison of images taken by a light microscope without the hyperbolic metamaterial (left column) and with the hyperbolic metamaterial (right column): two close fluorescent beads (top row), quantum dots (middle row), and actin filaments in Cos-7 cells (bottom row).
Adapted from Nature Communications
Electrical engineers at the University of California San Diego developed a technology that improves the resolution of an ordinary light microscope so that it can be used to directly observe finer structures and details in living cells.
The technology turns a conventional light microscope into what’s called a super-resolution microscope. It involves a specially engineered material that shortens the wavelength of light as it illuminates the sample—this shrunken light is what essentially enables the microscope to image in higher resolution.
“This material converts low resolution light to high resolution light,” said Zhaowei Liu, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC San Diego. “It’s very simple and easy to use. Just place a sample on the material, then put the whole thing under a normal microscope—no fancy modification needed.”
The work, which was published in Nature Communications, overcomes a big limitation of conventional light microscopes: low resolution. Light microscopes are useful for imaging live cells, but they cannot be used to see anything smaller. Conventional light microscopes have a resolution limit of 200 nanometers, meaning that any objects closer than this distance will not be observed as separate objects. And while there are more powerful tools out there such as electron microscopes, which have the resolution to see subcellular structures, they cannot be used to image living cells because the samples need to be placed inside a vacuum chamber.
“The major challenge is finding one technology that has very high resolution and is also safe for live cells,” said Liu.
The technology that Liu’s team developed combines both features. With it, a conventional light microscope can be used to image live subcellular structures with a resolution of up to 40 nanometers.
The technology consists of a microscope slide that’s coated with a type of light-shrinking material called a hyperbolic metamaterial. It is made up of nanometers-thin alternating layers of silver and silica glass. As light passes through, its wavelengths shorten and scatter to generate a series of random high-resolution speckled patterns. When a sample is mounted on the slide, it gets illuminated in different ways by this series of speckled light patterns. This creates a series of low resolution images, which are all captured and then pieced together by a reconstruction algorithm to produce a high resolution image.
The researchers tested their technology with a commercial inverted microscope. They were able to image fine features, such as actin filaments, in fluorescently labeled Cos-7 cells—features that are not clearly discernible using just the microscope itself. The technology also enabled the researchers to clearly distinguish tiny fluorescent beads and quantum dots that were spaced 40 to 80 nanometers apart.
The super resolution technology has great potential for high speed operation, the researchers said. Their goal is to incorporate high speed, super resolution and low phototoxicity in one system for live cell imaging.
Liu’s team is now expanding the technology to do high resolution imaging in three-dimensional space. This current paper shows that the technology can produce high resolution images in a two-dimensional plane. Liu’s team previously published a paper showing that this technology is also capable of imaging with ultra-high axial resolution (about 2 nanometers). They are now working on combining the two together.
Original Article: Light-Shrinking Material Lets Ordinary Microscope See in Super Resolution
More from: University of California San Diego
The Latest Updates from Bing News & Google News
Go deeper with Bing News on:
Super-resolution microscope
- Analysis of molecular processes in living cells with sub-10 nm spatial resolution
Researchers at the University of Würzburg have developed "photoswitching fingerprint analysis"—a unique technology that for the first time allows the analysis of molecular processes and the regulation ...
- CrestOptics’ DeepSIM Super Resolution Confocal Microscope Module Named by Microscopy Today as a Top 10 Best Microscopy Innovation Of 2022
CrestOptics S.p.A., a manufacturer of high-end microscopy solutions and advanced systems for fluorescence microscopy and diagnostic applications, has been recognised as developing one of the ten best ...
- Super-Resolution Microscopy Reagents Market 2022 Industry Updates, Future Growth, Business Prospects, Forecast to 2027
Jul 26, 2022 (Market Insight Reports) -- Super-Resolution Microscopy Reagents Market (US, Europe, Asia-Pacific) 2022 Global Industry Market research report gives key assessment on the market ...
- Super Resolution Microscope Market Size 2022: 15.66% CAGR | Current Trend, Share, Competitors and Forecast
Jul 22, 2022 (The Expresswire) -- Global Super Resolution Microscope Market Analysis and Insights: Report on "Super Resolution Microscope Market" 2022-2028 Report helps to Development Strategy for ...
- Smart Quantum Camera Enhances Imaging System Resolution
Researchers have presented a smart quantum camera for super-resolving image analysis that uses the self-learning capabilities of machine learning to recognize the statistical variability of unknown ...
Go deeper with Google Headlines on:
Super-resolution microscope
Go deeper with Bing News on:
Hyperbolic metamaterial
- META 2022, the 12th International Conference on Metamaterials, Photonic Crystals and Plasmonics
Be a part of META 2022, the 12th International Conference on Metamaterials, Photonic Crystals and Plasmonics, the world’s leading conference on nanophotonics and metamaterials, and take the ...
- Atomically-smooth gold crystals help to compress light for nanophotonic applications
to directly measure the optical fields of the hyperbolic image phonon-polaritons (HIP) propagating in a 63 nm-thick slab of hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) on a monocrystalline gold substrate ...
- Harvesting Energy in the Dark for Future Solar Technology
The metamaterial that Kruk and his team worked with is made of tiny nanoscopic structures of gold and magnesium fluoride. Its physical property -- known as magnetic hyperbolic dispersion -- is key to ...
- Manufacturing Bits: July 8
The device consisted of a pair of non-symmetric sub-wavelength gratings and a passive hyperbolic metamaterial. The fabricated gratings and metamaterial devices had wavelengths of 532nm and 633nm, ...
- Optical Microscope Resolves Down To 40 Nanometers
However, engineers at the University of California San Diego have published their results using a hyperbolic metamaterial composed of silver and silica to drive optical microscopy down to below 40 ...