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Miniaturized integration of a fluorescence microscope

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Authors: Kunal K Ghosh, Laurie D Burns, Eric D Cocker, Axel Nimmerjahn, Yaniv Ziv, Abbas El Gamal, Mark J Schnitzer
Publication: Nature Methods
Published Date: September 11, 2011
Article Link: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21909102/

Abstract

The light microscope is traditionally an instrument of substantial size and expense. Its miniaturized integration would enable many new applications based on mass-producible, tiny microscopes. Key prospective usages include brain imaging in behaving animals for relating cellular dynamics to animal behavior. Here we introduce a miniature (1.9 g) integrated fluorescence microscope made from mass-producible parts, including a semiconductor light source and sensor. This device enables high-speed cellular imaging across ∼0.5 mm2 areas in active mice. This capability allowed concurrent tracking of Ca2+ spiking in >200 Purkinje neurons across nine cerebellar microzones. During mouse locomotion, individual microzones exhibited large-scale, synchronized Ca2+ spiking. This is a mesoscopic neural dynamic missed by prior techniques for studying the brain at other length scales. Overall, the integrated microscope is a potentially transformative technology that permits distribution to many animals and enables diverse usages, such as portable diagnostics or microscope arrays for large-scale screens.

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