High-Performance Imaging Through Scattering Living Tissue

使用荧光探针动态成像神经活动和其他快速生理事件的能力， 活体大脑已经开始给神经科学带来革命性的变化。光散射在生物医学中的基本局限性 限制了对浅深度的快速成像的组织已经吸引了硬件发明者的大量关注， 已经开发了多种策略--从多光子激光扫描显微镜到自适应 光学方法试图反转组织散射。然而，成像扩大体积的脑组织， 以跟上动作电位等快速事件的速度，仍然是一个挑战。我们在这里建议将 问题，并使活的大脑本身更加透明。通过开发安全的化学物质， 有效地消除散射光的折射率不均匀性，我们将能够观察到高 在整个扩展体积中加速神经过程，例如整个皮层微电路（以及潜在地，跨 任意比例）。通过这种方式，神经科学家将能够分析跨电路的神经活动模式 潜在的复杂现象，如情绪，决定和行动，并有助于疾病状态。 除了神经科学，我们的技术可能会广泛改善对高速生理事件的观察 在生物体中，对免疫、发育、癌症以及生物学和医学的其他部分都很重要。

The ability to dynamically image, using fluorescent probes, neural activity and other fast physiological events in living brains has begun to revolutionize neuroscience. The fundamental limitation of optical scattering in living tissue, which limits fast imaging to shallow depths, has attracted much attention from hardware inventors, who have developed a diversity of strategies -- ranging from multiphoton laser-scanning microscopy, to adaptive optics approaches that attempt to invert tissue scattering. However, imaging extended volumes of brain tissue, at rates that keep up with fast events like action potentials, remains a challenge. We here propose to invert the problem, and make the living brain, itself, more transparent. By developing chemicals that safely and efficaciously smooth out refractive index inhomogeneities that scatter light, we will enable observation of high speed neural processes throughout extended volumes, e.g. entire cortical microcircuits (and potentially, across arbitrary scales). In this way, neuroscientists will be able to analyze the neural activity patterns across circuits underlying complex phenomena like emotions, decisions, and actions, and that contribute to disease states. Beyond neuroscience, our technology may broadly improve the observation of high-speed physiological events in the living body, of importance to immunity, development, cancer, and other parts of biology and medicine.