3D full-color images are obtained with conventional microscope
Conventional wide-field microscopy (WFM) cannot provide optical-sectioning (OS) images that are required for 3D volumetric reconstruction. The reason lies in the fact that the out-of-focus signals always appear within the in-focus plane. By introducing structured-illumination microscopy (SIM), researchers have previously achieved removing the out-of-focus components from the in-focus plane in full color (FC); however, the current FC-SIM approach needs three phase-shifted raw images for each focused plane and hundreds of axial-scanned planes. This approach requires a significant number of raw images and thus puts a heavy burden on data storage and processing-time cost. How to reduce such a burden is still a question.
Recently, a research team led by Prof. YAO Baoli at State Key Laboratory of Transient Optics and Photonics, Xi'an Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics (XIOPM) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), reported on a deep-learning scheme called FC-WFM-Deep that directly obtains full-color optical sectioning images for wide-field microscopy.1 In contrast to the FC-SIM approach, the reconstruction data size is 21-fold smaller and the in-focus depth is doubled.
The researchers say the technique fully exploits the high resolution and full-color capabilities of SIM. The deep-learning network only needs training to a single wide-field frame, resulting in high efficiency; after training, high-quality images with optical sectioning, considerable in-focus depth, and full-color can be directly acquired from the wide-field frame. FC-WFM-Deep has a comparable imaging quality to FC-SIM in terms of spatial resolution and dimensions.
FC-WFM-Deep significantly reduces 3D data-acquisition requirements without losing detail and improves t3D imaging speed by extracting the optical sectioning in the depth of field (DOF), say the researchers. The low-cost and straightforward method offers a promising tool to observe 3D color biological samples with high precision.
Source: http://english.cas.cn/newsroom/research_news/phys/202006/t20200629_239342.shtml
REFERENCE:
1. Chen Bai et al., Biomedical Optics Express (2020); https://doi.org/10.1364/BOE.389852.
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John Wallace | Senior Technical Editor (1998-2022)
John Wallace was with Laser Focus World for nearly 25 years, retiring in late June 2022. He obtained a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and physics at Rutgers University and a master's in optical engineering at the University of Rochester. Before becoming an editor, John worked as an engineer at RCA, Exxon, Eastman Kodak, and GCA Corporation.