Biology Enters Fourth Dimension

August 13, 2004 | Source: Wired News

A new microscope that lets scientists peer deeper into living organisms than ever before and in real time has been developed by researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory.

The technology, called Selective Plane Illumination Microscopy, or SPIM, allows scientists to study relatively large (2 to 3 millimeter) live organisms from many different angles, under real conditions and with minimal disruption to the specimen.

SPIM shines a very thin slice of light through the sample and records the image picked up by a separate detector array. Micromotors, which can move the sample a half-micron at a time, systematically move the specimen through the light sheet to capture images from each layer.

The information extracted from multiple, illuminated layers of the sample can be run through image-processing algorithms that merge the different views to create a 3-D image. Successive images captured over time can be used to produce movies of growing embryos.