High Resolution Structured Illumination Raster Scanning Fluorescence Microscopy

Fluorescence microscopy has become an indispensable tool in
biology and medicine. It is routinely used in drug development, to
diagnose health disorders and in DNA sequencing.
Despite enormous progress in instrumentation and deployment, high-
resolution microscopes remain expensive, bulky devices that require
skilled operators. As a consequence, they are found only in
specialized labs, limiting their accessibility.
The next big push in microscopy with large societal impact will come
from extremely compact and robust optical systems that will make
high-resolution microscopy highly accessible.
This push to miniaturization can be facilitated by photonic integrated
circuits—extremely compact chip-scale devices that are mass-
produced using CMOS process technology.
I will investigate a completely new approach towards high (diffraction
limited) resolution fluorescence microscopy that uses no lenses
(lens-free) and is based on integrated visible photonics. All lens-
based and state-of-the-art lens-free microscopy solutions use light
propagation in 3D space to illuminate a sample. In this project’s
approach, the illumination is confined to the 2D world of a slab-
waveguide. I will developed a method that allows to render a
complete high-resolution image within the constraints of the two
dimensions of a photonic circuit integrated on a CMOS imager.
This new technology will find many applications in life sciences and
compact, cost-effective DNA sequencing instruments.