SBIR Phase I: A parallelized microscope for high-speed, high-resolution imaging of organism behavior

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目的更广泛的影响是改进当前的数字显微镜成像技术，以产生更好的生物现象的图像和视频。目前的显微镜是有限的图像分辨率之间的权衡，观看面积和视频帧速率，这在许多成像实验中提出了一个瓶颈。例如，目前的显微镜无法观察模式生物，如斑马鱼和果蝇在自由运动期间的细胞细节。通过在一个大的可视区域内同时捕获高速、高分辨率的视频，该提案的新显微镜将克服标准显微镜的局限性，使科学家能够围绕基本行为进行新的发现。它还将大大提高目前高内容筛选实验的速度和范围，这些实验以高分辨率并行观察许多生物体，并且还将在高通量工业检测中开辟新的应用。拟议的项目将通过采用一种新的并行成像策略来解决当前显微镜面临的吞吐量有限的挑战。为了克服目前图像分辨率，视场和帧速率之间的权衡，该项目的第一个研究目标是开发一种新型的显微镜，由一组微型相机组成，同时以高分辨率和高速度观察大的观察区域。由54个微型摄像机拍摄的同步图像数据，以9 x6阵列排列，将通过新型软件以每秒100帧的速度数字组合成每帧1亿像素的视频。由此产生的视频流将包含比目前市场上任何其他高速图像传感器多10- 100倍的像素。该项目的第二个研究目标是创建能够有效处理大量图像数据的软件，以实现高效的存储和分析。该软件的第一个具体目标是跟踪、裁剪和分析多个自由移动生物体的视频数据，以提取关键的行为统计数据（例如，位置、方向、身体长度/曲率）。该项目的第三个研究目标是在一系列监测果蝇高速行为的生物实验中测试和验证新的成像硬件和软件。该奖项反映了NSF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。

The broader impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to improve current digital microscope imaging technology to produce better images and video of biological phenomena. Current microscopes are limited by a tradeoff between image resolution, viewing area and video frame rate, which presents a bottleneck in many imaging experiments. For example, current microscopes cannot observe model organisms such as the zebrafish and fruit fly at cellular detail during free movement. By simultaneously capturing high-speed, high-resolution video over a large viewing area, this proposal’s new microscope will overcome the limitations of standard microscopes to allow scientists to make new discoveries surrounding fundamental behaviors.It will also dramatically increase the speed and scope of current high-content screening experiments that observe many organisms at high-resolution in parallel, and will also open new applications in high-throughput industrial inspection. The proposed project will address the limited throughput challenges faced by current microscopes by adopting a novel parallelized imaging strategy. To overcome current trade-offs between image resolution, field-of-view and frame rate, the project’s first research objective is to develop a new type of microscope consisting of an array of micro-cameras simultaneously observing a large viewing area at high resolution and high speed. Synchronized image data captured by 54 micro-cameras, arranged in a 9x6 array, will be digitally combined via novel software into 100 megapixel-per-frame video at 100 frames per second. The resulting video stream will contain 10-100X more pixels per frame than any other high-speed image sensor currently on the market. The project’s second research objective is to create software that can efficiently process the large amount of resulting image data to enable efficient storage and analysis. The software’s first specific goal is to track, crop and analyze video data of multiple freely moving organisms to extract key behavioral statistics (e.g., position, orientation, body length/curvature). The project’s third research objective is to test and verify the new imaging hardware and software in a series of biological experiments monitoring the high-speed behavior of Drosophila Melanogaster.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.