Fast Volumetric Imaging of Seizures with Adaptive Optics Light Sheet Microscopy

Researchers including Bingxi Liu have demonstrated a breakthrough in microscopy: capturing seizures as they unfold in three dimensions. They combined adaptive optics with an electrically tunable lens to image a volume roughly half a millimeter across, at four frames per second—fast enough to track seizures in the transparent brains of zebrafish larvae. When they induced seizures using pentylenetetrazol, their system revealed the exact origin point in the posterior brain, followed by propagation forward, and gradual subsidence over tens of seconds. Per Hackaday, the technique could prove valuable wherever biologists need high-speed three-dimensional imaging of rapid biological processes.

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