New Technologies For //In Vivo// Imaging

Magnification Imaging Project

The project’s current goal is to create an apparatus that can be placed in a full body 3D scanning machine that is now currently used mostly to image small animals. The apparatus will provide the machine with about five times magnification and will make it so that the machine can effectively image much smaller objects than it is currently capable.

Motivation

With five times magnification, the 3D scanning machine will be able to image objects, such as cells, that are on a much smaller scale than rats and mice, which it currently images. This will allow the same machine to provide high quality 3D images of both large and small specimens making it versatile for many different kinds of imaging a lab may hope to undertake. Images taken by this magnification system will provide images detailed enough to clearly distinguish different cells and focus on specific cell features.

Solution

A 3D printed stage-like structure will be created so that individual lenses will provide the five times magnification required for whatever object is placed on top of the structure. The current aim is to fit the system to a specific well plate. Using a single lens for each well, the system will then be able to magnify each individual well within the plate and relay the image to the machine so that a highly magnified image can be taken on the content's of each well within the entire well plate.

Ruthenium-Poloxamer Nanoprobe Characterization

The current aim is to characterize Rudpp nanomicelle's reaction to dissolved oxygen and understanding how the Rudpp probe works in in vivo two-photon imaging to provide images with excellent detail and contrast.

Motivation

Ruthenium-poloxamer nanoprobes have excellent two-photon imaging capability and are sensitive to dissolved oxygen. The probes are easy and fast to prepare and thus provide and excellent, inexpensive way to obtain quality images from live organisms. Furthermore, describing the relation between Rudpp's florescence and the concentration of dissolved oxygen in a medium will allow detailed chemical concentrations to be obtained and mapped using the probes during life imaging.

Solution

Rudpp infused gels, meant to replicate biological medium, were illuminated with a laser as the surrounding ionized water solution was deoxygenated. The emission of the probes in the gel as well as the oxygen concentration of the surrounding solution were both monitored as the solution was deoxygenated by bubbling nitrogen gas through the solution and re-oxygenated by bubbling air through the solution. The data was monitored for several cycles and an exact relation between florescence and dissolved oxygen concentration for the Rudpp infused gels is currently being derived. The relation will eventually allow for detailed chemical concentration information to be obtained and mapped during imaging.