Light Beads Microscopy

Light Beads Microscopy (LBM) offers a scalable, spatiotemporally optimal signal acquisition approach to record data at rates limited by the fluorescence lifetime of the indicators. LBM achieves this by generating a column of light-beads from each high-energy pulse emitted by a low repetition laser source (a few MHz). The light-beads span multiple axial locations (up to 30) within a sample volume, with each light-bead’s power optimized as a function of depth. Furthermore, LBM utilizes a single excitation pulse to optimally address each voxel. As such, volumetric recording to capture large fields of view is possible at the rate that a conventional 2-photon microscopy records a single plane.

An in-depth overview is provided in the summary write-up following the original publication.

Biological applications unlocked by LBM include a recent study [1] which revealed an unbounded scaling of neuronal dimensionality with the number of neurons, which was only possible due to the simultaneously recording of activity from one million neurons in mice. Another recent example includes a study [2] showing how working memory is improved and consolidated with repetitive practice, for which 73,000 cortical neurons in mice were simultaneously observed as the animals learned and repeated their task.

[1] Manley et. al., Neuron 2024
[2] Bellafard et. al., Nature 2024