UC Santa Barbara

Optical microscopy is an essential tool for biological research, as it allows for non-invasive imaging of small animals. However, optical microscopy has its limits. Due to the low light level, fluorescence microscopy prohibits high speed imaging, making it difficult to study fast dynamic biological processes. In addition, optical blur due to the diffraction of light results in limited spatial resolution, particularly when using objective lenses with low numerical apertures. In this thesis, we propose computational imaging methods to overcome these limitations using a combination of novel image acquisition procedures and reconstruction algorithms.

The first part of this thesis deals with improving temporal resolution in fluorescence microscopy to image rapid, repeating processes. We take advantage of multiple acquisitions, each taken with different time delays or temporally modulated illumination patterns, to recover high frequency information that is lost with traditional imaging. We demonstrate our method to image the beating heart in live embryonic zebrafish with reduced motion blur and high resolution in time.

The second part of this thesis deals with reducing spatial blur in optical projection tomography, a form of optical microscopy that uses multiple 2D projections to reconstruct a 3D image of an object. We propose a method to reduce the optical distortion (as characterized by the system's optical point spread function) that can be implemented with a scanning acquisition approach combined with a modified filtered backprojection algorithm for reconstruction. We demonstrate our method to image blood vessels in larval zebrafish with high spatial resolution and reduced out-of-focus blur.

The final part of this thesis deals with the dimensional limitation of 2D sensors for measuring 3D motion in microscopy. We propose a method to combine two-dimensional motion estimates from multiple views to recover out-of-plane velocity and reconstruct a divergence-free, three-dimensional velocity field. We demonstrate our method to measure, for the first time, dynamic blood flow in 3D inside the beating heart of a live zebrafish using optical microscopy.

This thesis provides new tools that integrate custom image acquisition procedures and image reconstruction algorithms to overcome the resolution limitations -- temporal, spatial, and out-of-plane velocity resolution -- in optical microscopy. The methods presented in this thesis, in particular the single camera, active illumination method for temporal superresolution in fluorescence microscopy, will be directly applicable to a broad range of biological studies and will open up new perspectives for imaging small organisms in 3D (and time) with high spatio-temporal resolution.