The most popularly used optical microscope in cell bioimaging is the confocal microscope developed in the 20th century. However, as a traditional optical-wave microscope, the confocal microscopy suffers from the severe phototoxicity and slow speed that leaves its application unsuitable for live-cell imaging. In this talk, the speaker will review the recent development of light-sheet microscopy for live-cell imaging in his group. They have invented a 5D (3D space + 1D time + 1D color) Line Bessel Sheet (LBS) microscope with lateral/axial resolution of 250 nm/350 nm, and 2 Hz temporal resolution per channel for a 3D volume of 30 μm X 30 μm X 30 μm. As an ideal platform for live-cell high resolution bioimaging, the speaker will review its application in various biological cell systems. Currently, this microscopy technology has been successfully commercialized and released to market by their start-up company: Light Innovation Technology (LiT) Ltd. The works were supported by grants from the Offices of the Executive Vice-President and Provost, the Vice-President for Research & Graduate Studies and the Dean of Science at HKUST (Project no.: HKUST VPRGO12SC02), and the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (Project Nos. HKUST12/CRF/13G, C6030-14E).
About the speaker
Prof Shengwang Du received his BS in Electrical Engineering from Nanjing University in 1996, MS in Physics from Peking University in 1999, and MS in Electrical Engineering and PhD in Physics from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2002 and in 2005 respectively. He then researched as a Postdoctoral Scholar at Stanford University during 2005 – 2007. In 2008, he joined the HKUST Department of Physics as Assistant Professor and is currently a Professor of Physics and of Chemical & Biological Engineering. He is also the Associate Director of the Super-Resolution Imaging Center at HKUST, the Co-Founder & Chairman of Board of Light Innovation Technology Ltd, and the Co-Founder & Chief Scientist of NanoBioImaging Ltd in Hong Kong.
Prof Du’s research interests include atom optics, quantum optics, Bose-Einstein condensation, atom chip, laser cooling and trapping, nonlinear optics, solid state lighting, superconducting electronics, biophysics, optical microscopy & bioimaging. He co-authored the book, Optical Precursors: From Classical Waves to Single Photons and wrote a chapter entitled “Narrowband Biphotons: Generation, Manipulation, and Applications” for Engineering the Atom-Photon Interaction. He is also on the editorial board of the Journal of the Optical Society of America B: Optical Physics.