Thesis
3D printed optics for widefield and super-resolution optical microscopy
- Creator
- Rights statement
- Awarding institution
- University of Strathclyde
- Date of award
- 2025
- Thesis identifier
- T17203
- Person Identifier (Local)
- 202081819
- Qualification Level
- Qualification Name
- Department, School or Faculty
- Abstract
- Biological imaging research is fundamental to the development of both science and healthcare. One important factor within this development is 3D printing technology, which has become lower cost yet higher quality with each passing year. The technology has therefore seen success in its application to biological research and in-the-field healthcare diagnostics. Some biomedical imaging systems have yet to be developed at lower costs due to the requirement for specific optical elements. These unique constraints of optical elements can often create a premium in their price due to their bespoke manufacturing processes, and this in turn imposes a barrier to entry that constrains the array of available biological and diagnostic optical imaging in low-resource settings. When considering prototype, non-standard and free-form lens geometries within optical imaging research, the costs in manufacturing each optic increases further still. It is these costs especially which are passed onto the consumer, which itself slows or even halts completely the participation of biomedical research within low resource settings. The research within this body of work has shown the use of resin-based 3D printing of optical quality elements at low costs. A method for post-processing 3D printed parts into optical quality components was developed, with the 3D printed optics quantified in terms of their transmissivity, form and surface roughness in comparison to similar commercial optical elements. Until now, 3D printed optical elements have only shown success in standard chrome lithography test target imaging. Using two custom objective designs, 3D printed optics were used in brightfield and fluorescence microscopy to image sub-cellular biological features, showing that 3D printed optics can be a useful tool for biomedical research and healthcare diagnostics in high and low resource settings. From the shown success in imaging using 3D printed optics within biological research, other optical microscopy methods are automatically available to test the low cost, custom elements. One key area of interest is therefore optical microscopy beyond the diffraction limit, with the super-resolution technique multifocal image scanning microscopy a key contender for optical element comparison due to its use of microlens arrays. Therefore, a custom lenslet array was designed and manufactured using 3D printing techniques and integrated into an image scanning microscope. This integration showed comparable improvements to the contrast obtained using a commercial microlens array when examining mitochondria within a fixed BPAE cell sample. These results act as a key indicator to the successes which 3D printed optics can have within super-resolution microscopy techniques.
- Advisor / supervisor
- Bauer, Ralf
- Resource Type
- DOI
Relations
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PDF of thesis T17203 | 2025-02-27 | Public | Download |