Research Project
8896624
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): FINCH is a new imaging technology developed by Celloptic, Inc. FINCH is the acronym for Fresnel Incoherent Correlation Holography, a single beam laserless and motionless holographic principle in which a fluorescent holographic representation of the complete 3D volume is captured on a digital camera. The method obviates the need for serial stacks and captures the complete information of a 3D volume into a single hologram. Digital reconstruction of the hologram in a computer yields in focus images at any plane in a specimen. A user friendly FINCHSCOPE, which is the hardware and software implementation of the FINCH technology to microscopy will be developed during the course of this project. It will be based upon previous work done by the investigators who have been perfecting the technique during the last 6 years. In this work, several pre-production prototypes of the hardware and software will be developed and field tested under research investigator use. One version of the system will be developed as an attachment to existing fluorescent microscopes in which the FINCHSCOPE hardware is simply substituted for the camera and binocular viewing port. An import feature of the FINCHSCOPE is its ability to image microscopic objects in 3D at resolution which exceeds the optical limits in microscopy (super-resolution). Because of the simplicity of the FINCHSCOPE super-resolution implementation, this product will be dramatically less expensive and simpler than other super-resolution systems and thus make higher resolution fluorescent microscopy available to many more laboratories. The widespread ability of scientists and diagnostic laboratories to view specimens at improved resolution is anticipated to enhance the discovery of disease processes both in research and in diagnostics for improved delivery of health care.
