Collaborative Research: MRI Consortium: Development of Fiber-Coupled Stimulated Emission Depletion Microscopy (STED)

科罗拉多大学博尔德分校、科罗拉多大学安舒茨医学院和丹佛大学获得了一项奖励，以开发一种独特的微型光纤耦合显微镜，该显微镜将实现前所未有的空间分辨率的灵活成像。由工程师、物理学家和神经科学家组成的多元化团队开发，这款尖端显微镜不仅将为研究领域提供新的基础和实用见解，而且还将通过知识产权开发和未来的商业化和工业部署产生深远的影响。该研究团队将利用新工具扩大正在进行的工作，以指导和激励来自科学技术工程和数学（STEM）领域代表性不足的群体的年轻学生。在过去的几年中，实时脑内成像技术取得了巨大的进步，使人们能够前所未有地探索树突棘等动态结构如何使大脑功能如学习、记忆、认知和行为得以实现。然而，基于观察的对这些细胞结构的功能和响应的理解的未来进展受到光的基本特性固有的模糊的限制，这些特性模糊了这些特性。基于已建立并获得诺贝尔奖的受激发射损耗（STED）显微镜原理，该合作项目开发的仪器将能够将空间分辨率提高5倍。这种微型显微镜将首次实现对小结构的成像，如突触脊柱动力学和髓鞘形成的变化，潜在的行为和行为动物的社会互动。它还将使3D材料的光刻技术达到前所未有的空间规模，目标是下一代电子设备。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

An award is made to the University of Colorado Boulder, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and the University of Denver to develop a unique miniature optical fiber-coupled microscope that will enable flexible imaging at unprecedented spatial resolution. Developed with a diverse team that includes engineers, physicists, and neuroscientists, this cutting-edge microscope will not only provide new fundamental and practical insights across research areas, but will also yield far-reaching impacts through intellectual property development and future commercialization and deployment in industry. The research team will use the new instrument to expand ongoing efforts to mentor and inspire young students from groups underrepresented in Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields.Real-time in-brain imaging has made tremendous advances in the past few years, allowing unprecedented inquiry into how dynamic structures such as dendritic spines enable brain functions such as learning, memory, cognition, and behavior. However, future advances in observation-based understanding of the function and response of these cellular structures are limited by the blur inherent to light's fundamental properties that obscures these features. Based on the established and Nobel Prize-winning principle of Stimulated Emission Depletion (STED) microscopy, the instrument developed in this collaborative project will be capable of a 5X increase in spatial resolution. This miniature microscope will enable, for the first time, imaging of small structures such as synaptic spine dynamics and changes in myelination underlying behaviors and social interactions in behaving animals. It will also enable lithography in 3D materials at unprecedented spatial scale aimed towards the next generation of electronic devices.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.