Amazing New Microscope Looks Deep Through Cells in Living Tissues

A team of researchers from Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Harvard, Stony Brook, Caltech, and UC Berkeley have developed a remarkable new microscope for looking at living cells in 3D still inside the body.

The microscope relies on a technique dubbed as lattice light-sheet microscopy, which involves passing a plane of light through tissue repeatedly. The beam of light is powerful enough to image the insides of individual cells, but because it’s focused into a very narrow sheet it doesn’t seem to disturb the processes taking place inside the cells.