A Versatile Tiling Light Sheet Microscope for Imaging of Cleared Tissues

Abstract

We present a tiling light sheet microscope compatible with all tissue clearing methods for rapid multicolor 3D imaging of cleared tissues with micron-scale (4 × 4 × 10 μm³) to submicron-scale (0.3 × 0.3 × 1 μm³) spatial resolution. The resolving ability is improved to sub-100 nm (70 × 70 × 200 nm³) via tissue expansion. The microscope uses tiling light sheets to achieve higher spatial resolution and better optical sectioning ability than conventional light sheet microscopes. The illumination light is phase modulated to adjust the position and intensity profile of the light sheet based on the desired spatial resolution and imaging speed and to keep the microscope aligned. The ability of the microscope to align via phase modulation alone also ensures its accuracy for multicolor 3D imaging and makes the microscope reliable and easy to operate. Here we describe the working principle and design of the microscope. We demonstrate its utility by imaging various cleared tissues.

Keywords: cleared tissue imaging; light sheet microscopy; tiling light sheet microscopy; tiling light sheet selective plane illumination microscopy; tissue clearing; tissue expansion.