New high-speed 3D microscope ‘offers considerable research potential’

A groundbreaking new type of microscope could offer the ability to perform real-time 3D imaging at cellular resolution in living organisms for the first time.

Developed at Columbia University, the technology uses a simple, single-objective imaging geometry that requires no sample mounting or translation, making it possible to image freely moving samples.

Dubbed swept confocally aligned planar excitation microscopy (SCAPE), the technique delivers 3D imaging speeds that are between ten and 100 times faster than laser scanning confocal, two-photon and light-sheet microscopy.

Moreover, due to the fact it does not require any movement of the imaging objective lens or the sample, it can be combined with optogenetics and other tissue manipulations during the imaging process.

Elizabeth Hillman, associate professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia Engineering and of radiology at Columbia University Medical Center, said: "With SCAPE, we can now image complex, living things, such as neurons firing in the rodent brain, crawling fruit fly larvae and single cells in the zebrafish heart while the heart is actually beating spontaneously."