NYSCF Innovator Improves Revolutionary Imaging Technique
NewsNYSCF – Robertson Neuroscience Investigator Dr. Ed Boyden and his team at MIT Media Lab published their latest work advancing and improving their revolutionary imaging technique: expansion microscopy. The research, published in Nature Methods, describes an advance on standard expansion microscopy, increasing magnification by 20x the sample size.
The expansion microscopy technique revolutionized imaging by physically expanding biological specimens while maintaining their characteristics and proportions. Standard expansion microscopy begins by embedding and homogenizing a specimen in a dense polymer gel. The specimen is then physically expanded by 4.5x its starting size by swelling the gel. This technique enables scientists to study the biological structures of minute specimens with unheard of clarity, using standard microscopes and magnification.
The new process, dubbed iterative expansion microscopy, puts the sample through an additional expansion enabling nanometer resolution imaging of cells and tissues on conventional microscopes.