CONFOCAL COMPARE: Scientists built a light-sheet microscope to study the development of Maritigrella crozieri, a large flatworm found in the Caribbean. Their new SPIM setup provided more complete views of fixed larvae compared with traditional confocal microscopy. (Nuclei are stained green.)BMC DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY, doi:10.1186/s12861-016-0122-0, 2016.Last summer, Elizabeth Hillman showed participants in a Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory course the new light-sheet microscope she had invented. Students pulled leeches out of a pond and imaged them wiggling under the instrument, which shoots frames so quickly that the creatures’ quick movements were captured with no blur. “It was a von Leeuwenhoek moment, where we felt like we were seeing things we’ve never seen before,” says Hillman, an associate professor of biomedical engineering and radiology at Columbia University in New York.
Since 2004, when the first paper on light-sheet microscopy (aka selective plane illumination microscopy, or SPIM) appeared (Science, 305:1007-09), users of the technique have coalesced into a growing community of enthusiastic biologists. Compared with confocal microscopy, SPIM takes images more gently and rapidly, which allows researchers to track biological processes in 3-D at higher resolution over longer time periods. There are many variations of SPIM, but all use laser light focused into a thin sheet and a detection arm that is oriented perpendicular to the plane illuminated by the light sheet. In most SPIM setups, only the part of the sample that is being imaged becomes illuminated—which basically allows you to optically section your sample and reduce light damage. Researchers commonly use the technique to ...
