Label-free Brillouin endo-microscopy for the quantitative 3D imaging of sub-micrometre biology

La Cavera, Salvatore; Chauhan, Veeren M.; Hardiman, William; Yao, Mengting; Fuentes-Domínguez, Rafael; Setchfield, Kerry; Abayzeed, Sidahmed A.; Pérez-Cota, Fernando; Smith, Richard J.; Clark, Matt

doi:10.1038/s42003-024-06126-4

Label-free Brillouin endo-microscopy for the quantitative 3D imaging of sub-micrometre biology

La Cavera, Salvatore; Chauhan, Veeren M.; Hardiman, William; Yao, Mengting; Fuentes-Domínguez, Rafael; Setchfield, Kerry; Abayzeed, Sidahmed A.; Pérez-Cota, Fernando; Smith, Richard J.; Clark, Matt

Authors

SAL LA CAVERA III Salvatore.LaCaveraIII@nottingham.ac.uk
Nottingham Research Fellow

VEEREN CHAUHAN Veeren.Chauhan@nottingham.ac.uk
Assistant Professor

WILL HARDIMAN Will.Hardiman@nottingham.ac.uk
Research Associate

MENGTING YAO Mengting.Yao1@nottingham.ac.uk
Research Associate

RAFAEL FUENTES DOMINGUEZ RAFAEL.FUENTESDOMINGUEZ1@NOTTINGHAM.AC.UK
Research Fellow

Kerry Setchfield

SIDAHMED ABAYZEED SIDAHMED.ABAYZEED2@NOTTINGHAM.AC.UK
Assistant Professor

FERNANDO PEREZ-COTA FERNANDO.PEREZ-COTA@NOTTINGHAM.AC.UK
Assistant Professor

RICHARD SMITH RICHARD.J.SMITH@NOTTINGHAM.AC.UK
Associate Professor

MATT CLARK matt.clark@nottingham.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Optics

Abstract

This report presents an optical fibre-based endo-microscopic imaging tool that simultaneously measures the topographic profile and 3D viscoelastic properties of biological specimens through the phenomenon of time-resolved Brillouin scattering. This uses the intrinsic viscoelasticity of the specimen as a contrast mechanism without fluorescent tags or photoacoustic contrast mechanisms. We demonstrate 2 µm lateral resolution and 320 nm axial resolution for the 3D imaging of biological cells and Caenorhabditis elegans larvae. This has enabled the first ever 3D stiffness imaging and characterisation of the C. elegans larva cuticle in-situ. A label-free, subcellular resolution, and endoscopic compatible technique that reveals structural biologically-relevant material properties of tissue could pave the way toward in-vivo elasticity-based diagnostics down to the single cell level.

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Mar 29, 2024
Online Publication Date	Apr 15, 2024
Publication Date	Apr 15, 2024
Deposit Date	Apr 3, 2024
Publicly Available Date	Apr 15, 2024
Journal	Communications Biology
Electronic ISSN	2399-3642
Publisher	Nature Publishing Group
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	7
Issue	1
Article Number	451
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-024-06126-4
Keywords	Endo-microscopy; label-free imaging; picosecond ultrasonics; Brillouin scattering; elastography C ele- gans; cuticle *Salvatore La Cavera III
Public URL	https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/33027041
Publisher URL	https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-024-06126-4
Additional Information	Received: 17 July 2023; Accepted: 29 March 2024; First Online: 15 April 2024; : The authors declare no competing interests.