Research

New discovery in Biology and Medicine is strongly driven by new possibilities to visualize the processes of life. To see new things, the SaraLab lab invents and custom builds new types of optical elements and imaging systems. Specific problems in Biology demand that we push technology to the limit in terms of both spatial and temporal resolution. We focus our work on harnessing the power of diffractive Fourier optics in microscopy. This involves design and hands-on nanofabrication of diffractive optics elements for simultaneous 3D imaging using Multifocus microscopy (Abrahamsson et al. Nat. Methods 2013) and super-resolution microscopy (Abrahamsson et al. BOE 2017).

Projects

Aberration Corrected Multifocus Microscopy with Camera Array (M25)

This project explores the recording of 3D volumes fast and simultaneously by capturing 25 focal planes based on a novel design of an aberration-corrected multifocus microscopy (MFM). Potential applications include: neuron dynamics, embryo development, chromatin structure imaging in organisms with thin or transparent tissue (C.elegans, Drosophila larvae, hydra) or near the surface (mouse cortex, lamprey spinal cord, zebrafish)

MFM-SIM

This imaging modality alleviates the problem of insufficient volumetric acquisition speed in super-resolution biological imaging. Combining structured illumination microscopy (SIM) wide-field super-resolution technique with multifocus (MFM) volumetric acquisition speed one can image biological specimens beyond the classical diffraction limit minimizing photoxicity.

Image Analysis and Denoising

One open challenge in microscopy and imaging systems is image reconstruction and denoising of low-light and contrast datasets. The goal of denoising a dataset is to estimate the original data from an acquired noisy dataset by detecting and supressing the noise in the data.