Review of bio-optical imaging systems with a high space-bandwidth product

Jongchan Park; David J. Brady; Guoan Zheng; Lei Tian; Liang Gao

doi:10.1117/1.AP.3.4.044001

Advanced Photonics, Volume. 3, Issue 4, 044001(2021)

Review of bio-optical imaging systems with a high space-bandwidth product

Jongchan Park¹, David J. Brady², Guoan Zheng^3,4, Lei Tian⁵, and Liang Gao^1,*

Author Affiliations

¹University of California, Department of Bioengineering, Los Angeles, California, United States

²University of Arizona, James C. Wyant College of Optical Sciences, Tucson, Arizona, United States

³University of Connecticut, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Storrs, Connecticut, United States

⁴University of Connecticut, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Storrs, Connecticut, United States

⁵Boston University, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Boston, Massachusetts, United States

show less

Abstract Get PDF View Full Text

Optical imaging has served as a primary method to collect information about biosystems across scales—from functionalities of tissues to morphological structures of cells and even at biomolecular levels. However, to adequately characterize a complex biosystem, an imaging system with a number of resolvable points, referred to as a space-bandwidth product (SBP), in excess of one billion is typically needed. Since a gigapixel-scale far exceeds the capacity of current optical imagers, compromises must be made to obtain either a low spatial resolution or a narrow field-of-view (FOV). The problem originates from constituent refractive optics—the larger the aperture, the more challenging the correction of lens aberrations. Therefore, it is impractical for a conventional optical imaging system to achieve an SBP over hundreds of millions. To address this unmet need, a variety of high-SBP imagers have emerged over the past decade, enabling an unprecedented resolution and FOV beyond the limit of conventional optics. We provide a comprehensive survey of high-SBP imaging techniques, exploring their underlying principles and applications in bioimaging.

Keywords

bioimaging gigapixel imaging high resolution space-bandwidth product wide field of view

1 Introduction

Information requirements in bio-optical imaging are ever increasing. This demand is due to the landscape shift in contemporary biology, from morphological explorations and phenotypic probing of organisms, to an ongoing search for quantitative insights into underlying mechanisms at cellular and molecular levels. For example, observing large-scale neuronal activities of a brain¹ requires an imaging system with subcellular resolution within a field-of-view (FOV) that encompasses the whole brain. To image a whole mouse brain of $500 - {mm}^{3}$ volume with $1 - μ m$ resolution requires 500 billion spatial samplings, an enormous quantity that is far beyond the acquisition bandwidth of most current imaging systems.

Tools

Get Citation

Copy Citation Text

Jongchan Park, David J. Brady, Guoan Zheng, Lei Tian, Liang Gao. Review of bio-optical imaging systems with a high space-bandwidth product[J]. Advanced Photonics, 2021, 3(4): 044001

Download Citation

EndNote(RIS)BibTex Plain Text

Set citation alerts for article

Save article for my favorites