Tobias Schmitt-Manderbach

Optical imaging of post-embryonic zebrafish using multi orientation raster scan optoacoustic mesoscopy

Whole-body optical imaging of post-embryonic stage model organisms is a challenging and long sought-after goal. It requires a combination of high-resolution performance and high-penetration depth. Optoacoustic (photoacoustic) mesoscopy holds great promise, as it penetrates deeper than optical and optoacoustic microscopy while providing high-spatial resolution. However, optoacoustic mesoscopic techniques only offer partial visibility of oriented structures, such as blood vessels, due to a limited angular detection aperture or the use of ultrasound frequencies that yield insufficient resolution. We introduce 360° multi orientation (multi-projection) raster scan optoacoustic mesoscopy (MORSOM) based on detecting an ultra-wide frequency bandwidth (up to 160 MHz) and weighted deconvolution to synthetically enlarge the angular aperture. We report unprecedented isotropic in-plane resolution at the 9–17 μm range and improved signal to noise ratio in phantoms and opaque 21-day-old Zebrafish. We find that MORSOM performance defines a new operational specification for optoacoustic mesoscopy of adult organisms, with possible applications in the developmental biology of adulthood and aging.

Imaging of post-embryonic stage model organisms at high resolution using multi-orientation optoacoustic mesoscopy

Model organisms such as zebrafish play an important role for developmental biologists and experimental geneticists. Still, as they grow into their post-embryonic stage of development it becomes more and more difficult to image them because of high light scattering inside biological tissue. Optoacoustic mesoscopy based on spherically focused, high frequency, ultrasound detectors offers an alternative, where it relies on the focusing capabilities of the ultrasound detectors in generating the image rather than on the focusing of light. Nonetheless, because of the limited numerical aperture the resolution is not isotropic, and many structures, especially elongated ones, such as blood vessels and other organs, are either invisible, or not clearly identifiable on the final image. Herein, based on high frequency ultrasound detectors at 100 MHz and 50 MHz we introduce multi orientation (view) optoacoustic mesoscopy. We collect a rich amount of signals from multiple directions and combine them using a weighted sum in the Fourier domain and a Wiener deconvolution into a single high resolution three-dimensional image. The new system achieves isotropic resolutions on the order of 10 μm in-plane, 40 μm axially, and SNR enhancement of 15 dB compared to the single orientation case. To showcase the system we imaged a juvenile zebrafish ex vivo, which is too large to image using optical microscopic techniques, the reconstructed images show unprecedented performance in terms of SNR, resolution, and clarity of the observed structures. Using the system we see the inner organs of the zebrafish, the pigmentation, and the vessels with unprecedented clarity.

Increasing the imaging depth through computational scattering correction(Conference Presentation)

Imaging depth is one of the most prominent limitations in light microscopy. The depth in which we are still able to resolve biological structures is limited by the scattering of light within the sample. We have developed an algorithm to compensate for the influence of scattering. The potential of algorithm is demonstrated on a 3D image stack of a zebrafish embryo captured with a selective plane illumination microscope (SPIM). With our algorithm we were able shift the point in depth, where scattering starts to blur the imaging and effect the image quality by around 30 µm. For the reconstruction the algorithm only uses information from within the image stack. Therefore the algorithm can be applied on the image data from every SPIM system without further hardware adaption. Also there is no need for multiple scans from different views to perform the reconstruction. The underlying model estimates the recorded image as a convolution between the distribution of fluorophores and a point spread function, which describes the blur due to scattering. Our algorithm performs a space-variant blind deconvolution on the image. To account for the increasing amount of scattering in deeper tissue, we introduce a new regularizer which models the increasing width of the point spread function in order to improve the image quality in the depth of the sample. Since the assumptions the algorithm is based on are not limited to SPIM images the algorithm should also be able to work on other imaging techniques which provide a 3D image volume.