Thesis (M.S.)--Miami University, Dept. of Physics, 2009. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 57-61).

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Optical scanning holography (OSH) [1] has the benefit of recording the entire three-dimensional (3-D) volume of a specimen in the form of a two-dimensional (2-D) hologram. Reconstruction of the original volume can be accomplished by applying digital reconstruction or decoding techniques to the recorded hologram. Accurate reconstruction of the 3-D volume and more specifically, the individual 2-D optical sections without artifacts such as out-of-focus haze from adjacent sections has been the focus of much work including algorithms, optical techniques, and combinations of the two. This dissertation presents several different techniques for enhancing the reconstruction of a recorded specimen and its optical sections including the use of optical coding and phase filtering techniques in the traditional OSH optical system. / Ph. D.

This thesis concerns the experimental application of the technique of optical sectioning in the aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM). Another aim was to perform optical sectioning experiments on the still relatively new scanning confocal electron microscope (SCEM). To test the feasibility of this technique, experiments were performed on a variety of samples to measure the achievable depth response. Deconvolution methods were explored in an attempt to further improve the depth response. Finally, some of the first optical sectioning experiments were performed in the SCEM using both elastic and inelastically scattered electrons. The results showed a clear need to investigate confocal electron microscopy due to the missing cone problem for incoherent imaging in the STEM. This is particularly evident when imaging objects of greater width than the STEM probe. Confocal electron microscopy using inelastic electrons appeared to be a promising imaging mode for the future with this thesis consisting of early work in the field.

One in eight women in America will develop breast cancer at some point in their lives. Breast cancer is the second deadliest form of cancer for women in the United States. When a suspicious region of the breast is detected, the tissue is diagnosed by removing a sample, preparing an H&E section, and performing histopathology. This procedure is expensive, invasive, and can take days to return a diagnosis. An alternative to excision biopsies is to instead perform an optical biopsy. This work details endomicroscopes intended to perform optical biopsies in breast tissue. The work address two issues limiting current optical biopsy systems: insufficient resolution and inability to reject out of focus light. To improve the resolution of current endomicroscopes, ultra-slim objectives are developed using optical plastics and zero alignment fabrication techniques. These objectives can outperform current alternative endomicroscope objectives in terms of performance across the field of view and chromatic aberration correction, while remaining as narrow as a biopsy needle. Next, an endomicroscope which utilizes structured illumination to perform optical section is designed, tested, and evaluated on ex vivo breast biopsies. The new endomicroscope provides high contrast images by reducing out of focus background light. Finally, an achromatic, ultra-slim objective and the structured illumination endomicroscope are integrated to form an optical biopsy system with improved lateral resolution and axial response. This integrated system is a step forward for in vivo microscopy and cancer diagnoses.

The conventional light microscope is an indispensable tool for many physical and life science applications, but is of limited usefulness for three-dimensional imaging due to its increasingly narrow depth of field at high magnifications. Focused regions may be obscured by defocused neighbors or noise from extraneous light sources and subsurface scattering. By rejecting light originating from outside the depth of focus it is possible to minimize these problems. When a contiguous series of such focused slices, or optical sections, are obtained along an axis of an extended object they may be combined to form a complete, focused three-dimensional surface image. Here, a variety of methods to obtain optical sections in a reflective setup are presented. The first employs an optical feedback loop through a spatial light modulator (SLM) to selectively illuminate focused regions. The SLM is a flexible electro-optical device that also allows (non-feedback) experiments of an intensity modulated light source resulting in illumination with a linear structure. This structured illumination microscopy is an established sectioning technique, which requires three frame captures per axial position. By developing a color grid and exploiting the red, green, and blue channels of a CCD camera, the three frames have been reduced to one. The speed increase comes at a cost and the limiting effects of chromatic aberration are discussed. Digital holography offers an alternative to axial scanning by allowing the surface to be reconstructed from a single exposure. Use of multiple wavelength illumination with this extended focus imaging is proposed and preliminary results are shown.

The diploma thesis deals with theory of imaging in a transmitted-light digital holographic microscope using partially coherent illumination. The influence of spatial and temporal coherence state on optical sectioning property is solved. The coherent transfer function is calculated. From this function imaging characteristics for a two-dimensional scattering object are derived depending on its defocus. Two different designs of microscopes developed in the Laboratory of optical microscopy in IPE FME BUT are considered.

Single-molecule localisation microscopy (SMLM) allows imaging of fluorescently-tagged proteins in live cells with a precision well below that of the diffraction limit. As a single-molecule technique, it has also introduced a new quantitative approach to fluorescence microscopy. In the Part A of this thesis, the design and building of three SMLM instruments, the implementation of a custom-developed image analysis package and the characterisation of the photo-physical properties of the photo-activable fluorescent protein used in this thesis (mEos), are discussed. Then, a new post-processing method for SMLM analysis is characterised: axial optical sectioning of SMLM images is demonstrated by thresholding fitted localisations using their fitted width and amplitude to reject fluorophores that emit from above or below a virtual ?light-sheet?, a thin volume centred on the focal plane of the microscope. This method provides qualitative and quantitative improvements to SMLM. In the Part B of this thesis, SMLM is applied to study T cell activation. Although the T cell receptor plays a key role in immunity, its stoichiometry in the membrane of resting T cells is still a matter of debate. Here, single-molecule counting methods are implemented to compare the stoichiometry of TCRs fused with mEos2 in resting T cells to monomeric and dimeric controls. However, because of the stochasticity of mEos2 photo-physics, results are inconclusive and new counting techniques based on structural imaging are discussed. In addition to TCR triggering, T cells require the co-stimulatory triggering of the CD28 transmembrane receptor to become fully activated. However, some immobilised anti-CD28 antibodies, referred to as super-agonists (SA), can directly activate T cells without triggering the TCR. In this thesis, single-molecule tracking techniques are used to investigate the molecular mechanism of CD28 super-agonism in live T cells. The results indicate that the diffusion of CD28 is slowed by SA binding. This effect is further discussed in light of the kinetic-segregation model proposed for TCR triggering. Quantitative SMLM as implemented and further developed in this work offers new tools to investigate the molecular mechanisms initiating T cell activation, ultimately facilitating the discovery of novel approaches to target these pathways for therapeutic purposes.

Tato diplomová práce se zabývá výzkumem na téma vlivu prostorové koherence osvětlení. Účelem je určit schopnost osové lokalizace při zobrazení Koherencí řízeným holografickým mikroskopem (CCHM) v závislosti na různé prostorové koherenci světelného zdroje. Osová lokalizace je v tomto případě zkoumána jako kvalita rozlišení drobných detailů trojrozměrného vzorku, umístěných nad sebou. Teorie zobrazení holografickým mikroskopem a teorie rozptylu v nehomogenních prostředích je shrnuta v první části práce, v rozsahu nutném pro pochopení části praktické. Základní princip fungování mikroskopu a přesný popis jeho uspořádání je zde podrobně popsán. Proběhl mechanický návrh stavební úpravy mikroskopu tak, aby bylo možno využívat kondenzorovou optiku s vysokou numerickou aperturou a omezenými optickými vadami. Několik různých přístupů, které by mohly vést ke zlepšení zobrazovacích vlastností mikroskopu, bylo navrženo a vyzkoušeno a jsou zde popsány i s jejich výhodami a nevýhodami. Pro experimentální část práce byl vyroben modelový vzorek. Závislost osové lokalizace na prostorové koherenci osvětlení byla demonstrována pomocí simulace a následně ověřena experimentálně, pozorováním vyrobeného modelového vzorku. Experimentální výsledky potvrzují základní principy vycházející ze zmíněné teorie. Na závěr jsou navržena možná vylepšení, pro budoucí zpřesnění výsledků.

Dans le circuit de la greffe de cornée, l'endothélium de chaque greffon est observé en microscopie optique conventionnelle afin de vérifier que sa densité cellulaire est suffisante pour maintenir une bonne transparence après l'opération. Les greffons étant conservés dans un milieu spécifique, ils sont imprégnés de liquide et présentent donc des plis qui perturbent l'observation et le comptage des cellules. Ce problème pratique est à l'origine d’une étude théorique sur les concepts de profondeur de champ étendue et de shape-from-focus. A partir d'une séquence d'images acquise par sectionnement optique, les informations les plus nettes permettent d'une part d'accéder à la topographie de la surface observée et d'autre part de restaurer l'image de sa texture. Une reconstruction surfacique 3-D est alors obtenue en projetant la texture sur la topographie. Cette thèse considère essentiellement l’étape fondamentale de mesure de netteté du processus de reconstruction. Des nouvelles mesures génériques offrant une haute sensibilité à la netteté sont introduites. De par une stratégie 3-D originale au travers de la séquence d'images, une autre mesure très robuste au bruit est proposée. Toutes ces mesures sont testées sur des données simulées puis diverses acquisitions réelles en microscopie optique conventionnelle et comparées aux méthodes de la littérature. Par ailleurs, la mesure 3-D améliore nettement les reconstructions d'endothéliums cornéens à partir de leurs acquisitions particulièrement perturbées (inversions de contraste). Un processus itératif complet de reconstruction 3-D d’endothéliums cornéens est finalement décrit, aboutissant à des résultats solides et exploitables. / In the cornea transplant process, each graft endothelium is observed by conventional optical microscopy to check that its cell density is sufficient to maintain a proper transparency after the transplantation. The grafts are stored in a specific preservation medium, they are thus impregnated with fluid and therefore exhibit folds which make cell observation and counting difficult. This practical issue led to the following theoretical study about the so-called concepts: extended-depth-of-field and shape-from-focus. Throughout a sequence of images acquired by optical sectioning, the in-focus information allows on the one hand to recover the topography of the observed surface and on the other hand to restore the image of its texture. A 3-D reconstruction is then obtained by mapping the texture onto the topography. This thesis basically considers the fundamental step of the reconstruction process that is the focus measurement. New generic focus measurements exhibiting high sharpness sensitivity are introduced. Another one offering high noise robustness is proposed, due to an original 3-D strategy through the image sequence, unlike traditional methods that operate in 2-D. All of them are tested on simulated data and various real acquisitions, and compared to the state-of-the-art methods. Furthermore, the aforementioned 3-D focus measurement clearly improves the 3-D surface reconstructions of the corneal endotheliums from their particularly disturbed acquisitions (contrast reversals). A complete iterative process of 3-D reconstruction of the corneal endothelial surfaces is finally described, resulting in solid results that can already be transferred to cornea banks.