Development of an In-Vivo Brillouin Microscope (with application to Protein Aggregation-based Pathologies)

Introduction

The role and importance of mechanical properties of cells and tissues in cellular function, development, and disease has widely been acknowledged. However, standard techniques currently used to assess them exhibit intrinsic limitations, including:

• Invasiveness
• Lack of 3D capability
• Lack of sub-cellular resolution

Brillouin Microscopy

Recently, Brillouin Microscopy (BM), a type of optical elastography, has emerged as a non-destructive, label- and contact-free method. This technique can probe the viscoelastic properties of biological samples with diffraction-limited resolution in 3D.

This advancement has led to increased attention amongst the biological and medical research communities. However, due to the long acquisition time (hours), this novel technique has been applied only to fixed samples.

Challenges and Objectives

One important open challenge is to use this approach to follow the mechano-biological processes in living cells and in real time.

The aim of our project is to overcome the spectral-imaging acquisition time limitation by applying the heterodyne detection scheme. This will allow the collection of viscoelastic properties in living samples at a sub-second timescale.

Expected Outcomes

We will attempt to solve specific physio-pathological open problems in biomedicine for the first time.