Photonic chip based high-throughput, multi-modal and scalable optical nanoscopy platform

Project Information

NanoVision

Grant agreement ID: 101058016

DOI

10.3030/101058016

Project closed

EC signature date 17 March 2022

Start date 1 June 2022

End date 31 May 2025

Funded under

• The European Innovation Council (EIC)

Total cost

€ 2 489 571,25

EU contribution

€ 2 489 571,00

Coordinated by

CHIP NANOIMAGING AS
Norway

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - NanoVision (Photonic chip based high-throughput, multi-modal and scalable optical nanoscopy platform)

Reporting period: 2023-06-01 to 2025-05-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Seeing is believing! The project NanoVision, aims to commercialize world’s highest throughput TIRF optical microscopy and 2D optical nanoscopy imaging platform. Present day advanced optical nanoscopy set-up uses a complex and bulky microscope set-up to illuminate the sample while a simple glass slide is used to hold the sample. We change this paradigm such that a mass-producible photonic-chip holds and illuminates the sample and a simple and compact optical microscope is used for imaging. Our radical idea is thus to take out laser light steering and delivery from the microscope and transfer it to a photonic-chip via optical waveguides. Photonic chip based nanoscopy improves the throughput by a factor of 100x as compared to the existing commercial system, reduces the cost by a factor of 2x and provide flexibility in terms of resolution and FOV. These key differentiator of NanoVision will not only extend the present market of nanoscopy but could also open new market opportunities.

The invention of super-resolution optical microscopy (nanoscopy) has given us a glimpse of its impact in all fields of science and medical care. Imagine the new scientific discoveries that can be realized if every research and clinical laboratory is equipped with an optical nanoscope that can deliver super-resolution imaging enabling researchers a window to nanoscale biology. However, several pain points of the available solutions currently hinder wide scale penetration of optical nanoscopy, such as cost, complexity, small throughput and limited flexibility in terms of choice of resolution and field-of-view (FOV). NanoVision will fill this pressing gap in the market with an affordable, compact, multi-modal and high-throughput photonic-chip based optical nanoscopy.


The overall objectives are
Accelerate the development of on-chip nanoscopy technology platform
Perform field-testing within life sciences and clinical pathology market
Develop cooperation with all the stakeholders & investors
Conduct user and market survey
Formliate supply agreements with OEMs and product certification
Consolidate business case & strategy to attract long-term venture funding

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The progress have been made in all the work packages (WPs).
WP 1 Market survey, user-feedback and system defination. We conducted potential user surveys and participated in several international exhibitions providing us further opportunities to interact with potential end-users. The exhibitions we participated were:
1. SPIE Photonic West, San Francisco, USA. Jan 2023.
2. Focus of Microscopy (FOM) Porto, Portugal. April 2023. Here, we brought for the first time our prototype, named “ACP-ZERO” to demonstrate on-site super-resolution imaging.
3. NorMiC Oslo Norway, May 2023.
4. European Light Microscopy Initiative (ELMI), Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands, June 2023.
5. Chip NanoImaging at ShareLab Jan 2025. Chip NanoImaging now has a comple chip-based super resolution microscope system at ShareLab in Oslo Science Park.
6. Chip NanoImaging AS is proud to participate in the 13th NorMIC workshop on Biological Optical Microscopy at the University of Oslo (UiO), May 2025.
7. NanoVison Summit at EMBL Heidelberg 26 May 2025. Chip NanoImaging AS and EMBL have invited the scientific community to the 1st Summit on Single Molecule Analysis and Super-resolution Microscopy. The event was hosted on May 26th 2025 in Heidelberg, and it was open to all audiences both in-person and streaming. 33 persons attended personally an 66 online. The audience was from 67 different institutions.

WP 2: Development of ACP-ONE prototype
We have built a prototype called ACP-ZERO as a pre-cursor to ACP-ONE.
https://www.chipnano.com/products/

ACP-Zero is stand-alone fully automated system with user-friendly GUI interface: The GUI is continuously developed based on feedback we get from users that has tested the system and based on our in-house experiences. The system integration and hardware control is an integrated part of the user experience and GUI and thus a fast hardware control SW implementation is part of the GUI experience.

ACP-ONE prototype: One of our pre-EIC systems earlier version called ACP-ZERO has been upgraded and changed over the last 6months to have an early version of an ACP-ONE system which was tested in WP 1 for demonstration purposes.Custom chip carriers have been designed and fabricated.

WP 3: Reconstruction software, GPU acceleration and AI suite
Within the first year we made significant progress within reconstruction software and GPU processing of SMLM data coined as ArcticSTORM. It is a software suite developed for pre-processing, reconstruction, and post-processing of different kinds of dSTORM data, including DNA-PAINT. able to run on-the-fly image reconstruction in a region of interest in the image, which will make it much easier to assess sample quality.

WP 4 Industrial fabrication of photonic chip
We have contacted a total of seven foundries capable of medium-scale photolithographic wafer production, where waveguide structures are made on the wafer surface. Five of these companies or institutions replied with detailed plans for production and cost. We will order photonic chips with standard photolithography techniques, and the feature sizes will be well above minimum specifications.

WP 5 Validation of technology at user-site & developing application case study
A slight variation towards the original plan, this WP was supposed to start M18 but we have carried out a few imaging experiments from M8 onwards, using our two existing set-up, one at UiT and the other one with the Chip NanoImaging AS, (ACP-ZERO). We have centered our case studies on histology, bio-medical imaging and imaging of nano-sized bio-carriers such as extra-cellular vesicles.
Based on the user-studies we have build application notes:
https://www.chipnano.com/applications/

WP 6 Market readiness, Business Development, and VC-Funding
Thanks to the business development activities carried out in the project the spin-off Chip NanoImaging AS has raised 6 M NOK private VC funding in June 2023. Raising private VC funds are essential in order to bring this technology to the market. We have updated our market readiness and business canvas.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

ArcticSTORM On-the-fly single molecule localisation reconstruction: With GPU acceleration, ArcticSTORM can reconstruct >250 000 localisations per second. This is around 40x faster than ThunderSTORM for a small dataset with a field of view of 50 x 80 um2.

Chip NanoImaging AS is the winner of first place in the Wiley Analytical Science Award 2024. See more at the following link: https://analyticalscience.wiley.com/content/news-do/wiley-analytical-science-award-2024-winners