High-Resolution Imaging with Conventional Microscopes

MIT researchers have developed a method for making extremely high-resolution images of tissue samples at a fraction of the cost of other techniques, yet with similar resolution. The new technique relies on expanding tissue before imaging it with a conventional light microscope. Two years ago, the team showed that it was possible to expand tissue volumes 100-fold, resulting in an image resolution of about 60 nanometers. Now, they have shown that expanding the tissue a second time before imaging can boost the resolution to about 25 nanometers.