High speed fluorescent camera for blood diagnostics, brain mapping

UCLA Professor Bahram Jalali has developed a high-speed microscopy technique, forming images by reading an entire row of pixels at once and encoding the fluorescence from each pixel on a different radio frequency. The camera forms images approximately 10 times faster than current state-of-the-art technologies.

A laser beam is first split into two beams, with one of the beams changed slightly in frequency. The two beams then combine again on the sample that has been labeled with fluorescent molecules. As they interfere at the sample, the frequency difference between the two beams encodes the fluorescence from each pixel, allowing the camera can detect an entire row of pixels at one time. The researchers call the new technique “fluorescence imaging using radiofrequency-tagged emission,” or FIRE.

The technique can be applied in flow cytometry, which analyzes cells one by one in a flowing fluid. Unlike current imaging flow cytometers, the FIRE technique can keep up with conventional flow-cytometry speeds and image 50,000 cells per second. While most flow cytometers take only a single-point estimate of a cell’s fluorescence, FIRE can create an entire high-resolution, multicolor image of each cell, providing significantly more information to a biologist or clinician.

Lead author Eric Diebold said that “this information could be the difference between detecting a rare cancer cell in a blood sample or missing it completely”  and that they can “capture images of cells that are blur-free as they flow by at a speed around 100 times faster than state-of-the-art imaging flow cytometers.”

The researchers claim that the technique can also be applied in vivo, including viewing neural activity in the brain, making a much larger field of view available for analysis.