Jerome Mertz Colloquium: Building better microscopes

The Biomicroscopy Lab works on the development of new microscopy techniques for biomedical imaging. I will provide an overview of some of the techniques we have developed to perform in-vivo brain imaging in mice. We have recently become interested in voltage imaging, which enables the study of the electrical activity of neurons using fluorescence microscopy. Voltage imaging is particularly challenging because it requires high speed imaging in thick tissue. To simultaneously monitor large populations of neurons, volumetric imaging is also required. I will present various tools we have developed to address these challenges. Finally, I will discuss the challenge of phase imaging in thick tissue, which has led to opportunities for cross fertilization between the fields of optical microscopy and ultrasound imaging.