Live cell imaging in real-time, label-free and in high resolution – technical background

A microscopes’ resolution depends on its capacity to collect diffracted light, the bigger this aperture, the clearer the view. With our rotating light source we illuminate the sample from many directions and with a technique called interferometry, we can combine the signals “seen” by hundreds of illumination angles, so that the microscope effectively works together like one giant aperture. As a result, this allows us to compute (no ocular, no eyepieces) a signal with sub-cellular resolution of living cells and thanks to interferometry we do not require any chemical markers and we can compute a “digital cell reconstruction in 3D” – based upon the cell’s inherent physical properties. Read the Nature publication here.