Imaging rapid, dynamic life processes at high spatiotemporal resolution in deep tissues of living animals plays a crucial role in understanding the activities and mechanisms of disease in live animals. Optical microscopy imaging, for its high spatial resolution and low invasiveness, is an essential instrument in modern biomedical research.

Professor Chen Wei, the leader of the Intelligent Optical Micro/Nano Imaging team, graduated with a bachelor's degree in Optical Engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), obtained his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Stony Brook University, State University of New York between 2012 and 2018, and conducted postdoctoral research at the Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley from 2018 to 2023. In recent years, he has made numerous innovative and groundbreaking contributions in the fields of high spatiotemporal resolution optical microscopy for neuron and vascular functional imaging in the brain. He published more than ten papers as the first author in top-tier journals such as Nature Methods and Nature Communications, and over thirty papers as a co-author in premier journals like Nature Neuroscience, Cell Metabolism, and Elife. He has applied for and holds a US patent. He has been invited to review manuscripts for journals such as Nature Photonics, Nature Communications, Optica, and Engineering, and received the Sculpted Light in the Brain travel award in the United States. The team relies on the Intelligent Microsystems Institute of HUST and engages in research work in Advanced Biomedical Imaging Facility at HUST, with support from the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars.

Research Directions:

• Intelligent optical microscopy imaging

• Computational optics imaging

• Neurophotonics and biomedical diagnostic devices

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The team's early research achievements include:

1. High spatiotemporal resolution optical coherence Doppler tomography

   Real-time in vivo imaging of three-dimensional cerebral cortical blood flow velocity was achieved (Scientific reports 6 (1), 38786, 2016), reporting the deepest imaging depth (3.2 mm) in cerebral cortical vasculature imaging via optical coherence Doppler tomography to date, along with approximately 10 µm spatial resolution of blood flow and imaging speed of 100 million voxels per second. A wave division multiplexing-based random phase noise suppression algorithm was proposed, significantly improving the sensitivity of optical coherence Doppler tomography for imaging deep cortical capillary blood flow, achieving high-resolution imaging of deep cerebral cortical capillary networks (Journal of Biophotonics 11 (8), 2018). Based on these technologies, a US patent was applied for and granted (US20210196126A1).

   
   

2. Adaptive optics Bessel multi-photon volumetric imaging

   A mathematical model of Bessel beam aberration was established, and tools for calculating and simulating aberrations in Bessel beam multi-photon imaging systems were developed. A method for adaptive optics multi-photon high-speed in vivo imaging using computational light fields was proposed, solving the technical difficulty that existing back focal plane light field wavefront correction technologies cannot perform high-precision wavefront correction on Bessel beam volumetric imaging (Nature communications 12 (1), 6630, 2021).

   
   

3. Bessel droplet light multi-photon volumetric imaging

   Through wavefront engineering, a multi-photon volumetric imaging technology with high numerical aperture and low sidelobe artifacts was realized, capable of achieving high-contrast, high-resolution in vivo imaging in three-dimensional biological bodies (Nature Methods, 2024, in press).