Abstract

Optical resolution photoacoustic microscopy (OR-PAM) is a hybrid imaging method for visualizing organelles due to the high spatial resolution and abundant optical contrast. Usually, OR-PAM employs high numerical aperture (NA) objectives and high-frequency ultrasonic detectors to resolve three-dimensional (3D) microstructures of cells. Expansion microscopy (ExM) provides a nanoscale resolution by isotropically enlarging cells instead of utilizing ultrahigh NA objectives. In this Letter, we report the development of photoacoustic expansion microscopy (PA-ExM) that combines the advantages of OR-PAM and ExM for 3D organelle imaging using near-infrared light. We evaluate the performance of PA-ExM using label-free melanoma cells, where the image quality of melanosome distributions in expanded cells using a 40× objective is comparable to that of unexpanded cells using an oil-immersed 100× objective. The results suggest that PA-ExM possesses the great potential to study organelles.

© 2024 Optica Publishing Group

PAExM: label-free hyper-resolution photoacoustic expansion microscopy

Hyojin Kim, Jin Woo Baik, Seungwan Jeon, Jin Young Kim, and Chulhong Kim
Opt. Lett. 45(24) 6755-6758 (2020)

Photoacoustic shadow-casting microscopy

Jorge Tordera Mora, Xiaohua Feng, and Liang Gao
Opt. Lett. 44(15) 3897-3900 (2019)

Fast subcellular optical coherence photoacoustic microscopy for pigment cell imaging

Lin Li, Cuixia Dai, Qian Li, Qingliang Zhao, Xiaoyun Jiang, Xinyu Chai, and Chuanqing Zhou
Opt. Lett. 40(19) 4448-4451 (2015)

Isotropic-resolution photoacoustic microscopy with multi-angle illumination

Tianxiong Wang, Naidi Sun, Ruimin Chen, Qifa Zhou, and Song Hu
Opt. Lett. 44(1) 1-4 (2019)

High-frequency surface-micromachined optical ultrasound transducer array for 3D micro photoacoustic computed tomography

Zhiyu Yan and Jun Zou
Opt. Lett. 49(5) 1181-1184 (2024)