Miniscule Objects

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Miniscule Objects

A recent study at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has demonstrated that a brain-inspired image sensor can identify minute items like cellular components or nanoparticles that are undetectable to modern microscopes by going beyond the diffraction limit of light.

What kind of technology is this?

The method, which makes use of optical microscopy, a neuromorphic camera, and machine learning algorithms, represents a significant advance in the ability to identify objects smaller than 50 nanometers.
Optical microscopes cannot discriminate between two objects that are smaller than a specific size due to the diffraction limit (typically 200-300 nanometers).
The human retina turns light into electrical impulses, and the neuromorphic camera imitates this process.
Each pixel functions independently in neuromorphic cameras, producing sparser and fewer data. The procedure resembles how the human retina functions.
It enables much greater temporal resolution "sampling" of the environment via the camera.
Each pixel in conventional cameras records the amount of light hitting it, and these pixels are gathered together to recreate an image of the subject.
The experiment focused laser pulses at high and low intensity and measured the variation in the fluorescence levels to identify individual fluorescent beads smaller than the limit of diffraction.
The camera records the signal as an "ON" event as the light intensity rises, while an "OFF" event is reported as the light intensity falls.
Reconstructing frames required pooling the data from these occurrences.

What role does this technique play?

This method can be used widely to precisely track and comprehend stochastic processes in physics, chemistry, and biology.
It will make it easier to comprehend biological processes like self-general organization norms.
Using this method, the group was also able to closely monitor the motion of a fluorescent bead flowing freely in an aqueous solution.

What is Stochastic process?

It is a procedure that makes use of chance and is also referred to as the random process.
For instance, in radioactive decay, each atom has a predetermined probability of disintegrating at any given time.

Read Also: Caesium-137

Source: The Hindu

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