A Sharper View Inside Cells | HHMI Janelia
![Cells - Microscopy image](/sites/default/files/styles/focal_point_1000x325/public/2023-01/1000%20Li%20et%20al%20Nature%20Biotechnology%202023%20Fig%203c.jpg?itok=3Lcb_rHD)
Co-authors Hari Shroff (HHMI Janelia) and Patrick La Rivière (University of Chicago) collaborate in the ϲappWhitman Center.
A in Nature Biotechnology from the details two practical ways to improve the axial, or z, resolution of 3D structured illumination microscopy, a technique to see inside living cells pioneered by former Janelia Group Leader Mats Gustafsson, who died in 2011.
In 3D-SIM and other fluorescence microscopy techniques, the axial resolution of the image is often blurred. This means researchers can clearly see details in two dimensions, on the x and y planes, but details in the third dimension, on the z plane, are fuzzy. Previous attempts to resolve this issue were difficult to implement.
A project led by Xuesong Li, a postdoc in the Shroff Lab, developed two ways to practically deal with the problem. In one method, a mirror is added to the microscope to create an additional beam of light, changing the interference pattern, and enabling finer, sharper resolution along the z axis.
The second method, which uses deep learning, blurs the sharp x and y axes to look like the blurry z axis and then trains a neural network to reverse these blurry images. The network then uses that information to un-blur the z axis.