Hybrid Solid-Liquid Optics Enable Scalable, High-Resolution, Multi-Immersion Light-Sheet Microscopy
Year: 2025
Type: preprint
Abstract: Modern biology increasingly depends on data-driven discovery, requiring scalable and affordable high-content 3D imaging across molecular to organ scales. Although tissue clearing, expansion microscopy, and light-sheet microscopy (LSM) enable subcellular-resolution imaging of intact specimens, their scalability remains fundamentally limited by detection optics: immersion objectives deliver high-resolution, aberration-free imaging but with short working distances, high cost, and multi-immersion incompatibility, while air objectives offer long working distances and portability at lower cost but suffer from severe aberrations and reduced photon collection when imaging immersed samples. We introduce the Hybrid Solid-Liquid Immersion Lens (HySIL) framework, which pairs an off-the-shelf solid optical component with a refractive index-matched liquid to precompensate aberrations and enhance resolution. Building on HySIL, we developed SCOPE and Super-SCOPE, objective-agnostic imaging devices achieving submicron lateral resolution (<0.75 μm) across centimeter-scale samples using inexpensive air objectives with >30 mm working distances. Integration with a low-cost LSM platform yielded a compact, scalable system demonstrated for multi-immersion, multi-color, subcellular-resolution mapping of cleared or expanded mouse, salamander, and cavefish brains, human iPSC-derived organoids, and 3D histopathology of breast tissue. HySIL and SCOPE establish an accessible foundation for scalable, high-resolution volumetric imaging, advancing data-driven biological discovery.
Authors: Cheng Gong, Pauline Affatato, Matt Fay, Sudha R. Guttikonda, Nathan J. O’Connor, Emerson Noble, Maci Heal, Benjamin Haydock, Renee Mapa, Estanislao Daniel De La Cruz, Johanna E. Kowalko, Maria Antonietta Tosches, Charles R. Gerfen, Rene Hen, Christopher D. Makinson, Hanina Hibshoosh, Jack Glaser, Raju Tomer
Language: English
Subfield: Biophysics
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
Awards: NeuroExM, A comparative approach for decomposing the mammalian brain architectural complexity, Evolutionary approaches to identify genetic architecture regulating aggression, RNA Programmable and Scalable Brain Cell Type Tools Across Vertebrates, PRIMING THE PUMP: TRAINING PHYSICIAN-SCIENTISTS IN TRANSLATIONAL PSYCHIATRY, Functional Organization of the Cerebral Cortex and Basal Ganglia, Cancer Center Support Grant
OpenAlex ID: W4415879274