Live Cells seen with 7x Greater Sensitivity using new Microscopy Technique

u-tokyo.ac.jp

84 points·oedmarap··7 comments

IIUC, the article seems to define the term "light phase" to mean what a layman light me would call "brightness". But it seems crazy to me that they'd overload the term "phase", when it has a very obvious alternative definition in the field of optics.

Can someone clarify if that's what the article is actually saying?

To detect phase changes you have to turn them into amplitude changes. It then makes sense to call the phase-change-turned-amplitude-change a "phase change." Yes, this elides a critical part of the interpretation, but if we were to insist on carrying around a complete interpretation with every noun we'd wind up with nouns as long as textbooks. Even Germans don't take it that far.

Had to look up Quantitative phase-contrast microscopy:

> Conventional phase contrast microscopy and related methods, such as differential interference contrast microscopy, visualize phase shifts by transforming phase shift gradients into intensity variations.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_phase-contrast_...

I wonder how long it will be before they start using quantum mechanically squeezed states (that trade off position and momentum uncertainty to "beat" the uncertainty principle) like at LIGO to do microscopy.

The Somatascope did this first:

https://youtu.be/KGJW94ciq4c?t=416

Before quantum was a buzzword.

This reminds me of popular HDR+ techniques used in my smartphone.

"Our ADRIFT-QPI method needs no special laser, no special microscope or image sensors; we can use live cells, WE DON’T NEED ANY STAINS OR FLUORESCENCE, and there is very little chance of phototoxicity"

Are they suggesting their method can replace immunofluorescence?

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