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Phoenix666 writes:

Researchers at The University of Nottingham have developed a break-through technique that uses sound rather than light to see inside live cells, with potential application in stem-cell transplants and cancer diagnosis.

The new nanoscale ultrasound technique uses shorter-than-optical wavelengths of sound and could even rival the optical super-resolution techniques which won the 2014 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

This new kind of sub-optical phonon (sound) imaging provides invaluable information about the structure, mechanical properties and behaviour of individual living cells at a scale not achieved before.

Researchers from the Optics and Photonics group in the Faculty of Engineering, University of Nottingham, are behind the discovery, which is published in the paper 'High resolution 3-D imaging of living cells with sub-optical wavelength phonons' in the journal Scientific Reports.

Gets my vote for amazing science story of the day.

Fernando Pérez-Cota et al. High resolution 3D imaging of living cells with sub-optical wavelength phonons, Scientific Reports (2016). DOI: 10.1038/srep39326

Original Submission