Open-top light-sheet (OTLS) microscopy

Over the past decade, light-sheet microscopy, also known as selective plane illumination microscopy (SPIM), has emerged as the technique of choice for rapid 3D fluorescence microscopy of relatively transparent specimens (e.g. embryos and optically cleared tissues). 

In light-sheet microscopy, a thin planar excitation beam is incident upon the specimen perpendicular to the detection axis such that only one localized focal plane (“optical section”) of interest is excited within the sample. Light-sheet systems utilize highly sensitive and fast sCMOS cameras to obtain 2D images from a specimen, from which a 3D dataset may be rapidly generated by scanning the specimen (or light sheet).  Early light-sheet microscopes were constrained to image small non-clinical specimens (e.g. embryos, mouse brains) that were embedded in agarose and/or mounted in specialized cuvettes, thus limiting the size/geometry of the specimens and the ease-of-use of the systems. 

With our unique OTLS microscopes, all optical components are positioned below a transparent sample holder, which allows the microscope to accommodate clinical specimens of arbitrary size and thickness without physically interfering with the illumination and collection optics. This provides an ease-of-use akin to a flatbed document scanner.