Microscopy opens up a new world for human beings and brings enormous breakthroughs in different fields such as life sciences and medicine. However, traditional optical microscopy has long been restricted by the space-bandwidth product, tissue opacity, optical aberrations, and phototoxicity, blocking it from meeting the demanding requirements in 3D imaging speed, the field of view, imaging durations, and spatial resolution in complicated tissue environments.
Jiamin Wu, an assistant professor at Tsinghua University, has devoted himself to the research and application of computational light field microscopy to break these barriers by integrating optical design and computation for the study of spatiotemporal heterogeneity in mammalian organs at the subcellular level, as a panorama of different pathological or physiological states.
Jiamin proposed the concept of ultrafine measurement and synthesis of the incoherent light field. He developed scanning light-field imaging to bypass the uncertainty principle and break the trade-off between spatial resolution and angular resolution in light-field measurements. He also implemented a framework of digital adaptive optics, which could modulate the incoherent light field in postprocessing instead of analog modulation with complicated optical systems, providing a new solution for the fundamental problem of optical aberrations.
For the huge data challenge in mesoscale microscopy, Jiamin developed various optical computing methods including Fourier-space diffractive deep neural networks and meta-processing units. By applying the unique properties of light in analog computing, he achieved significant improvement in computing power and energy efficiency over traditional electronics.
These efforts and research results opened up a new horizon for the study of intercellular interactions in mammals.
In Jiamin’s view, his current efforts in mesoscale intravital imaging have opened up the door to understanding how millions of cells organize and function as an ensemble during their native states such as the brain, while there remain great data challenges for analyzing and modeling the multiscale behaviors of the living systems spanning organelles, cells, tissue, and organs. Therefore, he plans to continue to develop better intravital mesoscale imaging instruments and data analysis platforms for diverse applications in neuroscience, oncology, and immunology. In the meantime, his innovations provide a new pathway for universal imaging applications and may bring various breakthroughs in almost all fields including industrial inspection, mobile devices, medicine, and astronomy.
