A team at UCLA has modified a microscope by taking out the lens in order to develop a nano-scale system that can create three-dimensional tomographic images of nano-particles. The research paper has recently appeared in the online journal, “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences”.
According to Aydogan Ozcan, lead author of the research and associate professor of electrical engineering at UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, a nano-scale optical imaging system that could be harbored on an opto-electronic chip has multiplebenefits. Scientific research could be accelerated, impacting cell and developmental biology. The nano-size also lowers overall equipment costs.
The Ozcan's group that included students, Serhan Isikman and Waheb Bishara have created a tomographic microscopy system using advanced lens-free imaging technology. Ozcan, an analyst at the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA, says an optical microscope resembles a series of pipes that emit images. This lens-less imaging technique that does not need pipes, uses a new design.
Organic forms including cells are half transparent. A light beamed on a cell prototype causes shadows that show the cellular outlines and the intricacies of their sub-cellular forms. When the shadow is beamed on a digital sensor array, an image is formed without needing a lens. The system could fit below a microfluidic chip to monitor and direct sub-millimeter biological prototypes and liquids, with the two tools working in tandem, where the microfluidic chip deposits and removes a prototype from the lens-less imager in an automated manner.
Rotating the light source to light up the prototypes from various angles causes three-dimensional images. These angles enable the system to make use of tomography that helps create high resolution three-dimensional images.
The National Science Foundation, the U.S. Office of Naval Research and the National Institutes of Health and the Gates Foundation and the Vodafone Americas Foundation funded the research program.
Source: http://www.ucla.edu