High-definition brain with a new holographic microscope!

Professor Kim Moonseok of the Catholic University of Korea and Professor CHOI Myunghwan of the National University of Seoul new ones kind of holographic microscope. According to the results, it is possible to see through the skull, which is intact. The first images of a brain inside 3D high resolution are those of a mouse.

To examine the internal characteristics of a living organism with the help of light, it is necessary to have sufficient light energy and accurately measuring the signal reflected from the target tissue. However, organic tissues are organized in rather intricate textures: when the light hits the cells, multiple effects occur diffusion And deformation making it difficult to obtain images sharp. It is therefore essential to discourage the continuous scattering of light and correct the “wavefront distortion”. To achieve this, you must proceed to: subtract: Remove multiple scattering waves and increase the single scattering wave ratio, which a holographic microscope can do.

The case of the mouse

All-in 2019 the first positive results were registered after applying the holographic microscope: it was tested by the same research group to determine the neural network of live fishwithout having to resort to surgical removal of the skull.

Then we moved on to the next phase of the research, where we tried to explore this new technology on a mammalian brain, a mouse.

However, rodents have thicker skulls and for this reason it was not possible at the time to obtain a neural image of the brain without removing operative or thinning the skull, due to severe deformation of the light and the multiple scattering that occurred as the light passed through the bone structure of the mouse brain.

Research developments

After three years, end of July 2022, the research team reported that they were able to quantitatively analyze the interaction between light and matter, further improving their previous microscope. In this recent study, they reported successfully using a holographic microscope three-dimensional a super depth allowing you to observe the substances at a depth “never seen before”.

This was possible thanks to the development of a algorithm and some mathematical operations, the result of three years of study and improvement. The group, not giving up, continued to demonstrate this new technology by re-observing a mouse’s brain.

The microscope was able to right wavefront distortion even at depths previously impossible with existing technology. The new microscope managed to obtain an advertising image high resolution of the neural network of the animal’s brain. All this was achieved in the visible wavelength and above all without deleting the mouse skull.

These important results certainly open new avenues in the field of diagnostic imaging, looking to the future of medicine with less and less invasive tests. The research is published in the online edition of the journal Science Advances

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