Smith Cameron A B, Duan Mengtong, Yan Jipeng, Taylor Laura, Shapiro Mikhail, Tang Meng-Xing
Department of Bioengineering, Imperial College London, London, UK.
Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA USA.
NPJ Acoust. 2025;1(1):5. doi: 10.1038/s44384-025-00008-7. Epub 2025 Apr 24.
Photo-activated localization microscopy (PALM) has been a game-changer, breaking the diffraction limit in spatial resolution. This study presents the Deactivation Super Resolution (DSR) method, which utilises the deactivation of genetically encodable contrast agents, enabling us to super-resolve and pinpoint individual cells with ultrasound as they navigate through structures which cannot be resolved by conventional B-Mode imaging. DSR takes advantage of Gas Vesicles (GVs), which are air-filled sub-micron particles that have been expressed in genetically engineered bacterial and mammalian cells to produce acoustic contrast. Our experimental results show that DSR can distinguish sub-wavelength microstructures that standard B-mode ultrasound images fail to resolve by super-localising individual mammalian cells. This study provides a proof of concept for the potential of DSR to serve as a super-resolution ultrasound technique for individual cell localisation, opening new horizons in the field.
光激活定位显微镜（PALM）是一项变革性技术，突破了空间分辨率的衍射极限。本研究提出了失活超分辨率（DSR）方法，该方法利用可遗传编码的造影剂的失活，使我们能够在单个细胞穿过传统B模式成像无法分辨的结构时，用超声对其进行超分辨率成像并精确定位。DSR利用了气体囊泡（GVs），气体囊泡是充满空气的亚微米颗粒，已在基因工程细菌和哺乳动物细胞中表达以产生声学造影。我们的实验结果表明，DSR可以通过对单个哺乳动物细胞进行超定位，区分标准B模式超声图像无法分辨的亚波长微观结构。本研究为DSR作为用于单个细胞定位的超分辨率超声技术的潜力提供了概念验证，为该领域开辟了新的视野。
