Phase-sensitive fluorescent imaging with coherent reconstruction

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel imaging technique that enables phase-sensitive fluorescent imaging by transferring the spatial propagation phase from coherent illumination to incoherent fluorescent emission, significantly enhancing speed and depth of biological imaging.

Contribution

The paper presents a new method that allows coherent imaging techniques to be applied to fluorescent light, overcoming previous limitations and expanding biological imaging capabilities.

Findings

Enables phase-sensitive imaging of fluorescent molecules.

Increases imaging speed and depth of field.

Expands biological imaging applications.

Abstract

Optical imaging plays a critical role in advancing our understanding of three dimensional dynamics of biological systems. Coherent imaging (CI) methods exploit spatial phase information, encoded through propagation of coherent signal light emerging from a specimen, to extract a three-dimensional representation of the object from a single high-speed measurement. Until now, CI methods could not be applied to incoherent light, severely limiting their ability to image the most powerful biological probes available - fluorescent molecules - with sufficient speed and volume to observe important processes, such as neural processing in live specimens. We introduce a new imaging technique that transfers the spatial propagation phase of coherent illumination light to incoherent fluorescent light emission. The transfer of propagation phase allows CI techniques to be applied to fluorescent light imaging, and leads to large increases in imaging speed and depth of field. With this advance, biological imaging of fluorescent molecules is significantly expanded.