MIT researchers discovered a paradoxical phenomenon in optical physics that could enable a new bioimaging method that’s faster and higher-resolution than existing technology. They discovered that, under the right conditions, a chaotic mess of laser light can spontaneously self-organize into a highly focused “pencil beam.”
Using this self-organized pencil beam, the researchers captured 3D images of the human blood-brain barrier 25 times faster than the gold-standard method, while maintaining comparable resolution. By showing individual cells absorbing drugs in real-time, this technology could help scientists test whether new drugs for neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s or ALS reach their targets in the brain, with greater speed and resolution.
“The common belief in the field is that if you crank up the power in this type of laser, the light will inevitably become chaotic. But we proved that this is not the case. We followed the evidence, embraced the uncertainty, and found a way to let the light organize itself into a novel solution for bioimaging,” says Sixian You, assistant professor in the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), a member of the Research Laboratory for Electronics, and senior author of a paper on this imaging technique.
