Optical microscopy, one of the most important tools in clinical diagnostics and biomedical investigations, is currently limited to the observation of superficial layers in tissue, and cannot be used for imaging deep inside the human body. This results in the requirement for dangerous invasive procedures such as biopsy in order to perform clinical diagnostic. The reason for this limitation is that light scattering in tissue randomizes the light propagation directions, and thus blurs any high-resolution imaging information. The inability of microscopes to look deep into tissue is the same as our inability to see through dense fog. The conventional wisdom is that the high resolution information is lost due to scattering, but our recent works have shown this is not necessarily true when one is able to correctly combine the novel digital tools of the information-age, with digital control and acquisition of light and ultrasound.
The objective of this project is to develop a new kind of microscope, one that can peer deep inside visually opaque samples, by combining novel physical insights on the propagation and interaction of light and ultrasound in complex samples with advanced computational reconstruction algorithms.
While ultrasound imaging allows investigations deep inside tissue, it lacks the microscopic resolution of optical microscopes, and thus does not permit microscopic studies of cellular structures, crucial for accurate diagnosis of cancer and other diseases. The goal of our work is to combine light and ultrasound to develop techniques that can combine the penetration depth of ultrasound with the sub-micron resolution of light.
Achieving our goals would have great impacts on medical diagnostics, as it will remove the requirement for invasive procedure such as biopsy, as well as a great impact on biomedical investigations, such as the challenges in studying the activity of neurons deep inside the brain.
