UTFacultiesTNWResearchDept BISBiomedical Photonic Imaging (BMPI)NewsPrestigious ERC Starting Grant for Ivo Vellekoop

Prestigious ERC Starting Grant for Ivo Vellekoop

The prestigious ERC starting grant was awarded to Ivo Vellekoop. The € 1.5 million grant will be used to investigate radical new ideas that will lead to the development of a new generation of microscopes with superior imaging depths inside tissue than previously thought possible.

Ivo Vellekoop

https://www.utwente.nl/.system/dl/ic%7EAQJARh4A1B5pA8U6CwBJXnMCBwHDbAJbAYA6fHs

Optical microscopes are ubiquitous tools in biomedical research and clinical pathology. The depths to which these microscopes retain high resolutions is a few 100 micrometers. The reason is the strong light scattering in tissue which makes conventional focusing of light using lenses impossible.

Despite centuries of developments in microscopy, achieving tight focusing in the presence of scattering remained a problem. In 2007, however, Ivo and Allard Mosk showed that scattering is not necessarily an impediment to achieving focusing, if the light used for imaging or microscopy is tailored by wavefront shaping to compensate for scattering.

In Ivo’s project proposal ‘DEEP VISION’, he takes another step to use these principles and new ideas from his recent Nature Physics article, to create a new generation of microscopes working with the aid of scattered light.

Contact: Ivo Vellkoop (i.m.vellekoop@utwente.nl)