Neurophase
3D/4D quantitative phase imaging for neuroscience at cellular level
The project addresses one of the major health-related societal challanges, the testing of the human nervous system at cellular level and investigation of the biological and molecular basis of diseases of civilization. The objective is to collect and analyse the structural and functional properties of single cells of nervous system in order to deepen the understanding of their behaviour and enhance the effectiveness of advanced therapy procedures. It is realized by proposing and implementing the novel tools of non-invasive, label-free 3D/4D quantitative phase imaging, namely digital holographic microscopy (DHM) and holographic tomographic microscopy (HTM) with the parameters adapted to neuroscience specific requirements. The three-year collaborative project between the Institute of Electro-Optical Science and Technology, National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan and the Institute of Micromechanics and Photonics, Warsaw University of Technology with participation of the researchers from The Institute of Experimental Biology, Polish Academy of Science, Poland focus on three main tracks: (1) holographic/tomographic data processing, (2) DHM/DHT system development and (3) implementation of the methods and systems of neural cell measurements and monitoring to solve the preselected hot topics in neuroscience at cellular level. ICT works (1) focus on development of new methods and algorithms for phase retrieval and phase manipulation which are essential for DHM and on development of the tomographic algorithms with capability of fast, high contrast, isotropic and spatially invariant accuracy of large volumes imaging for HTM.
At DHM/DHT system level (2) the work aim in development of enhanced and new optomechatronics architectures of DHM/DHT with active modulation of illuminating wavefronts, implementation of new scanning scenarios for limited angle tomography and combining time-resolved holographic technique with pulse laser and functional phase/tomographic imaging to provide a novel spatio-temporal cellular detection method. Also the new concept of fluorescence holographic and tomographic microscope will be developed and tested for multimodal neural cell investigations. All these developments will be implemented to perform advanced measurement and analysis tasks (3) including: measurement of 3D/4D refractive index distribution in a living cell and detecting the dynamic behavior of volumetric variations in the nuriet/organelle inside the living cell at different time scales, determination of relationships between gene regulation in neurons, investigation of neuronal elasticity, as well as the early diagnosis of the and investigation of treatment effectivity. The study of dynamic imaging and analysis for neural cells and structures with a real-time 3D/4D imaging will bring a new vision in many applications in neuroscience studies at cellular level.