Biomedical imagery

If you didn’t attend TEDx last Saturday, you may not have heard of some of the cool ideas presented. One of the most prominent lectures was delivered by Dr Philipp Jungebluth’s lecture on the potential to engineer regenerative medicine and tissue. It got me thinking about the power of medical technology, apparently at an opportune time. The University of St Andrews has recently found a way to see far more detail in biological cells by using a curved beam of light for a new 3D microscope.

The team of interdisciplinary researchers, led by physicists Professor Kishan Dholakia and Dr Tom Vettenburg, are calling this new form ‘light sheet imaging’. The University spelled it out for the rookies, saying a “microscope creates 3D images of cells by seeing how a sample lights up slice-by-slice when moved through a sheet of light.” Even crazier, the sheet would ideally be as thin as a razor’s edge. Still working out the kinks, the researchers have found that when the light sheet is squeezed in one place it spreads in another. This means they can view the inner detail of only a handful (in cellular terms this means hundreds) of cells at a time. Yet, the curved light beam is shaped in a way that allows for clarity and efficiency without a waif ‘blade’ of light. The sharpness of cell images is definitely high-definition.

Besides being incredibly advanced technology it also signals that St Andrews is a leader in biomedical imaging. Let’s take a step back to remember that a typical human cell is roughly one-tenth the diameter of one strand of hair and this discovery seems even more impressive.