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upstart writes:

Rotating blue laser light reveals unimagined dynamics in living cells:

University of Freiburg scientists have employed a microscopy technique known as rotating coherent scattering (ROCS) to resolve cellular-level detail without the need to rely on fluorescence imaging. This means they can make "movies" to study the dynamics of cells because they take images at 100 frames per second. It uses a rapidly rotating blue laser beam, causing lightwaves to scatter at the structures of cells to generate images. They use blue laser light because objects as small as cells and viruses scatter much more light in the blue than in the red, allowing them to get "brighter" pictures. The laser is also directed in at an oblique angle to increase the contrast of the image, much as how you'd look for smudges on surfaces by looking at light reflected at low angles.

The Freiburg physicist and engineers from the Department of Microsystems Engineering (IMTEK) rotate the oblique laser beam a hundred times per second around the object and thereby produce 100 images per second. "So in ten minutes we already have 60,000 images of living cells, which turn out to be far more dynamic than previously thought," says Rohrbach. Dynamic analyses like this demand enormous computing power to process just one minute of visual material, however. Therefore, a variety of computer algorithms and analytical processes first had to be developed so that the data could be properly interpreted.

[...] "Our primary aim wasn't to generate pretty pictures or films of the unexpectedly high dynamic of cells -- we wanted to gain new biological insights." For instance, the ROCS technology enabled them to observe how mast cells open small pores in just a few milliseconds when stimulated, in order to eject spherical granules at an inexplicably high force and speed. The granules contain the transmitter histamine, which can subsequently lead to allergic reactions.