Kilohertz volumetric imaging of in vivo dynamics using squeezed light field microscopy

Abstract

Volumetric functional imaging of transient cellular signaling and motion dynamics is often limited by hardware bandwidth and the scarcity of photons under short exposures. To overcome these challenges, we introduce squeezed light field microscopy (SLIM), a computational imaging approach that rapidly captures high-resolution three-dimensional light signals using only a single, low-format camera sensor. SLIM records over 1,000 volumes per second across a 550-µm diameter field of view and 300-µm depth, achieving 3.6-µm lateral and 6-µm axial resolution. Here we demonstrate its utility in blood cell velocimetry within the embryonic zebrafish brain and in freely moving tails undergoing high-frequency swings. Millisecond-scale temporal resolution further enables precise voltage imaging of neural membrane potentials in the leech ganglion and hippocampus of behaving mice. Together, these results establish SLIM as a versatile and robust tool for high-speed volumetric microscopy across diverse biological systems. Squeezed light field microscopy (SLIM) combines ideas from tomography and compressed sensing with light field microscopy to enable volumetric imaging at kilohertz rates, as demonstrated in blood flow imaging in zebrafish and voltage imaging in leeches and mice.