Light sheet fluorescence microscopy for high speed 3-D imaging: applications to the study of heart disease and cancer cell invasion

Light sheet fluorescence microscopy enables high speed 3D fluorescence imaging of live cells with low photobleaching and phototoxicity. This project will develop novel light sheet microscopy technology to study live cells in high speed in 3D and to perform 3D screening of cells in multiwell plates. The first part of the project will develop a novel inverted light sheet fluorescence microscope system using adaptive optic elements for rapid refocusing for high speed 3D imaging as well as a second mode of operation for lower speed but high spatial resolution imaging. This will enable the structure of cardiomyocytes to be studied at high resolution and subsequently in 3D at high speed with accurate spatial registration of the two datasets. The existing oblique plane microscope setup will also be used during the project to study the invasion of cancer cells in 3D cultures and a significant part of the project will be to develop and accelerate the image acquisition, preprocessing and analysis pipeline.