Cellular superresolved imaging of multiple markers using temporally flickering nanoparticles

Imaging of nanoparticle dynamics in live and apoptotic cells using temporally-modulated polarization

Gold nanoparticles are widely exploited in phototherapy. Owing to their biocompatibility and their strong visible-light surface plasmonic resonance, these particles also serve as contrast agents for cell image enhancement and super-resolved imaging. Yet, their optical signal is still insufficiently strong for many important real-life applications. Also, the differentiation between adjacent nanoparticles is usually limited by the optical resolution and the orientations of non-spherical particles are unknown. These limitations hamper the progress in cell research by direct optical microscopy and narrow the range of phototherapy applications. Here we demonstrate exploiting the optical anisotropy of non-spherical nanoparticles to achieve super-resolution in live cell imaging and to resolve the intracellular nanoparticle orientations. In particular, by modulating the light polarization and taking advantage of the polarization-dependence of gold nanorod optical properties, we realize the 'lock-in amplification', widely-used in electronic engineering, to achieve image enhancement in live cells and in cells that undergo apoptotic changes.

Improved Margins Detection of Regions Enriched with Gold Nanoparticles inside Biological Phantom

Utilizing the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) effect of gold nanoparticles (GNPs) enables their use as contrast agents in a variety of biomedical applications for diagnostics and treatment. These applications use both the very strong scattering and absorption properties of the GNPs due to their SPR effects. Most imaging methods use the light-scattering properties of the GNPs. However, the illumination source is in the same wavelength of the GNPs' scattering wavelength, leading to background noise caused by light scattering from the tissue. In this paper we present a method to improve border detection of regions enriched with GNPs aiming for the real-time application of complete tumor resection by utilizing the absorption of specially targeted GNPs using photothermal imaging. Phantoms containing different concentrations of GNPs were irradiated with a continuous-wave laser and measured with a thermal imaging camera which detected the temperature field of the irradiated phantoms. By modulating the laser illumination, and use of a simple post processing, the border location was identified at an accuracy of better than 0.5 mm even when the surrounding area got heated. This work is a continuation of our previous research.

Bright fluorescent silica-nanoparticle probes for high-resolution STED and confocal microscopy

In recent years, fluorescent nanomaterials have gained high relevance in biological applications as probes for various fluorescence-based spectroscopy and imaging techniques. Among these materials, dye-doped silica nanoparticles have demonstrated a high potential to overcome the limitations presented by conventional organic dyes such as high photobleaching, low stability and limited fluorescence intensity. In the present work we describe an effective approach for the preparation of fluorescent silica nanoparticles in the size range between 15 and 80 nm based on L-arginine-controlled hydrolysis of tetraethoxysilane in a biphasic cyclohexane-water system. Commercially available far-red fluorescent dyes (Atto647N, Abberior STAR 635, Dy-647, Dy-648 and Dy-649) were embedded covalently into the particle matrix, which was achieved by aminosilane coupling. The physical particle attributes (particle size, dispersion, degree of agglomeration and stability) and the fluorescence properties of the obtained particles were compared to particles from commonly known synthesis methods. As a result, the spectroscopic characteristics of the presented monodisperse dye-doped silica nanoparticles were similar to those of the free uncoupled dyes, but indicate a much higher photostability and brightness. As revealed by dynamic light scattering and ζ-potential measurements, all particle suspensions were stable in water and cell culture medium. In addition, uptake studies on A549 cells were performed, using confocal and stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy. Our approach allows for a step-by-step formation of dye-doped silica nanoparticles in the form of dye-incorporated spheres, which can be used as versatile fluorescent probes in confocal and STED imaging.

Three dimensional imaging of gold-nanoparticles tagged samples using phase retrieval with two focus planes

Optical sectioning microscopy can provide highly detailed three dimensional (3D) images of biological samples. However, it requires acquisition of many images per volume, and is therefore time consuming, and may not be suitable for live cell 3D imaging. We propose the use of the modified Gerchberg-Saxton phase retrieval algorithm to enable full 3D imaging of gold-particle tagged samples using only two images. The reconstructed field is free space propagated to all other focus planes using post processing, and the 2D z-stack is merged to create a 3D image of the sample with high fidelity. Because we propose to apply the phase retrieving on nano particles, the regular ambiguities typical to the Gerchberg-Saxton algorithm, are eliminated. The proposed concept is presented and validated both on simulated data as well as experimentally.