Functional Microscopy of Individual Neurons in the Living Human Retina

Subcellular, functional imaging of neurons in living humans could revolutionize biomedical research and prove valuable in the clinic.

With optical techniques, subcellular resolution is achievable and although the eye provides optical access to the retinal neurons, the size of the eyes pupil currently prevents subcellular resolution in all optical imaging techniques of the living retina.

In this project, I will develop a novel tomographic microscopy technique and use it to demonstrate at least a 4-times better resolution for retinal tomography compared to the state-of-the-art. For the first time, a resolution below 1 m will be achieved for imaging of the living human retina.

For this, I will use innovative structured illumination and reconstruction techniques that project coherent light through the sclera (transscleral) or the skull (transcranial), allowing for unprecedented resolution in 3-D retinal tomography.

My method will use interferometric detection with noiseless amplification and exploit recent computational methods to reconstruct and correct the data.

In addition to morphology, my technique will also assess the functional state and activity of neurons after optical stimulation of the photoreceptors. For this, I will harness changes in phase and speckles of the image data caused by physiological processes. This imaging will be non-invasive and without contrast agents.

With this technology, I want to enable researchers and clinicians to study the detailed structure and function of individual neurons and their interactions in the living human eye with microscopic 3-D tomography.

This revolutionary approach may provide new insights into human physiology and aid in the diagnosis and treatment of ophthalmic and neurological conditions.With a strong background in high-performance computational imaging methods, their application to retinal imaging, and experience in both industry and academia, I am uniquely qualified for this groundbreaking research.