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LIFEGATE
ERC Consolidator Grant
Runtime: 01.11.2017 - 30.04.2023
Microscopy can nowadays facilitate immensely detailed observations in living matter, but only in very limited depths. This is due to overwhelmingly complex organization of living matter, which makes tissues of all higher order organisms opaque. A variety of endoscopes can reach much deeper, the imaging quality is however always compromised and their usage in sensitive tissues such as the brain structures is often responsible for extensive tissue damage. Both life sciences - particularly neuroscience, as well as health-care would benefit immensely, if detailed observations are made possible through miniature endoscopes retaining the imaging capacity of the best light-based microscopes.
Funded by the European Research Council (ERC), LIFEGATE is a 5-years-project aiming to develop hair-thin endoscopic devices which can efficiently funnel a variety of advanced microscopic techniques through. They operate on entirely different principle when compared to standard endoscopes: Instead of quidding the image pixel-by-pixel in flexible fibre bundles or reforming the image periodically by single or multiple narrow lenses, they deliver the image information via a single optical fibre acting as a light quidding pipe. The light signals propagating through are entirely scrambled so they leave the fibre as randomly spatially distributed signals. The use of digital holography can control and reverse this randomizing process and enable delivery of light to the object under investigation in pure, unscrambled way. This relaxes many limitations in the construction of endoscopic imaging devices including the otherwise unavoidable compromises between the instrument’s footprint, working distance and the ability to see the detail. This however comes with several new challenges which must be addressed before this perspective concept becomes practical, a burden which LIFEGATE took on as its overarching objective.
Perhaps the largest impact of the ERC grant will be the successful implementation of holographic endoscopy which will bring about several new opportunities in the investigation of the complex processed of life matter as well as its impairments. Particularly in the domain of neuroscience, it will provide a new, minimally invasive window into fundamental processes behind sub-cellular-scale functional connectivity of neurons and onset of common disabling neuronal disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease. Separately in health-care environment, it will bring a new technological basis for keyhole clinical diagnostics, enabling intra-operative live histology and microsurgery, reaching currently inaccessible regions of the human body, while sending back images with sub-cellular resolution in-situ.
LIFEGATE is organized along four objectives. The first focuses on pushing the technological basis to its current limits, including finding and employment of the best holographic modulators and optical fibres, devising the most stable and compact optical geometries and compiling the computer control algorithms with the most efficient numerical approaches. The second objective extends the fundamental basis particularly by replacing complex calibration procedures by highly accurate modelling of light transport and crucially making the imaging performance immune to degradation caused by bending or twisting the optical fibre. The third aims to construct the first holographic endoscope suitable for the use in clinical environments and test its benefits in relevant conditions.
Building on the scientific achievements of the original LIFEGATE project there are now 2 ERC Proof-of-Concept grants that will further advance research to introduce a new modalities for investigating the impact of neuronal diesease in live animal models ( ERC-PoC StrokeGATE) and for freely moving animals (ERC-PoC WokeGATE).
- ERC- PoC WOKEGATE started November 2022
- ERC-PoC STROKEGATE started November 2022
Team
Spin-out project for commercialization - EXIST funding DeepEn 2021-2024:
Publications
- 110 μm thin endo-microscope for deep-brain in vivo observations of neuronal connectivity, activity and blood flow dynamics
M Stibůrek, P Ondráčková, T Tučková, S Turtaev, M Šiler, T Pikálek, P Jákl, A Gomes, J Krejčí, P Kolbábková, H Uhlířová, T Čižmár
Nature Communications (2023) - Hybrid multimode-multicore fibre based holographic endoscope for deep-tissue neurophotonics
Y Du, S Turtaev, IT Leite, A Lorenz, J Kobelke, K Wondraczek, T Čižmár - CARS microscopy through a multimode fiber probe with reduced four-wave mixing background
J Trägårdh, T Pikálek, M Stibůrek, S Simpson, A Cifuentes, T Čižmár - Near perfect focusing through multimode fibres
AD Gomes, S Turtaev, Y Du, T Čižmár
Optics Express 30 (7), 10645-10663 - Suppression of the non-linear background in a multimode fibre CARS endoscope
T Pikálek, M Stibůrek, S Simpson, T Čižmár, J Trägårdh
Biomedical Optics Express 13 (2), 862-874 - Thermal stability of wavefront shaping using a DMD as a spatial light modulator
B Rudolf, Y Du, S Turtaev, IT Leite, T Čižmár
Optics Express 29 (25), 41808-41818 - Computational image enhancement of multimode fibre-based holographic endo-microscopy: harnessing the muddy modes
T Tučková, M Šiler, DEB Flaes, P Jákl, S Turtaev, S Krátký, R Heintzmann, ...
Optics Express 29 (23), 38206-38220 - Time-averaged image projection through a multimode fiber
DB Flaes, H Štolzová, T Čižmár
Optics Express 29 (18), 28005-28020 - Polarization-resolved second-harmonic generation imaging through a multimode fiber
A Cifuentes, T Pikálek, P Ondráčková, R Amezcua-Correa, ...
Optica 8 (8), 1065-1074 - Side-view holographic endomicroscopy via a custom-terminated multimode fibre
BM Silveira, T Pikálek, M Stibůrek, P Ondráčková, P Jákl, IT Leite, ...
Optics Express 29 (15), 23083-23095 - Memory effect assisted imaging through multimode optical fibres
S Li, SAR Horsley, T Tyc, T Čižmár, DB Phillips
Nature Communications 12 (1), 1-13 - All-optical manipulation of photonic membranes
M Askari, BC Kirkpatrick, T Čižmár, A Di Falco
Optics Express 29 (10), 14260-14268 - Compressively sampling the optical transmission matrix of a multimode fibre
S Li, C Saunders, DJ Lum, J Murray-Bruce, VK Goyal, T Čižmár, ...
Light: Science & Applications 10 (1), 1-15 - Label-free CARS microscopy through a multimode fiber endoscope
J Trägårdh, T Pikálek, M Šerý, T Meyer, J Popp, T Čižmár
Optics express 27 (21), 30055-30066 - Robustness of light-transport processes to bending deformations in graded-index multimode waveguides
DEB Flaes, J Stopka, S Turtaev, JF De Boer, T Tyc, T Čižmár
Physical review letters 120 (23), 233901 - High-fidelity multimode fibre-based endoscopy for deep brain in vivo imaging
S Turtaev, IT Leite, T Altwegg-Boussac, JMP Pakan, NL Rochefort, ...
Light: Science & Applications 7 (1), 1-8