SKM 2023 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 28: Poster Session II

BP 28.55: Poster

Thursday, March 30, 2023, 18:00–20:00, P2/EG

We can see you think: Towards label-free imaging of action potentials — •Andrii Trelin¹, Heiko Lemcke², Sophie Kussauer², Christian Rimmbach², Robert David², and Friedemann Reinhard¹ — ¹Institute for Physics, University of Rostock — ²Department of Cardiac Surgery, Rostock University Medical Center

The ability to directly observe neuronal communication like propagation of action potentials (AP) is crucial for the understanding of biological neural networks such as the mammalian brain. Existing methods either cannot access cells deep inside tissue (microelectrode arrays) or are not suitable for observing cells over long time periods (fluorescence). We are developing a novel method of AP imaging, based on the fact that the propagation of an AP through a neural network is accompanied by tiny movements due to various processes, including an increase of cell volume, a change of membrane tension, and others. Although movements happen on a nm scale, i.e. beyond the resolution of classical microscopy, theoretical estimates show that detection of these movements is possible by performing high-speed video recording of the cell and combining information from multiple pixels. The sensitivity can be amplified by employing a suitable optical setup, e.g. interferometric microscope. In this poster, we present the design of the experimental setup and share some of the results obtained in the project. Additionally, we will discuss the development of algorithms, capable of extracting cell movement information from high-speed videos. These include simple statistical analysis of videos, decomposition methods such as PCA, as well as machine learning approaches.