USC researchers have engineered a novel method to visualize living samples. Scientists affiliated with the USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience have published their findings in Nature Communications. Previously, fluorescence hyperspectral imaging (fHSI) has allowed researchers the ability to differentiate colors across a spectrum, tag molecules, and produce colored images of the internal structures of an organism. However, this technology is limited in that it doesn’t reveal the full-color spectrum and requires a large amount of data processing which requires significant retrieval and processing times.
USC researchers have developed their new method, spectrally encoded enhanced representations (SEER) in order to address these limitations. Their method offers significantly more clarity, 67 times faster speeds, and 2.7 times greater definition than previous techniques. Relying on mathematical computation to handle faster data processing, it can produce fluorescent tags across the full spectrum of colors in greater detail.
Future applications of this exciting method include the detection of early stage lung disease and potential damage of pollutants. Optimizations of these kinds of imaging technologies, fHSI and SEER, could be able to spread to the consumer level with installation potential in mobile phones for on hand visualization.