We have developed photoacoustic tomography (PAT) for deep-tissue imaging, offering in vivo functional, metabolic, molecular, and histologic imaging from organelles to entire organisms. Additionally, we developed light-speed compressed ultrafast photography (CUP), capable of recording at 219 trillion frames per second. CUP can capture the fastest phenomena, such as light propagation, and can also slow down to record events like neural conduction. Further, our research extends to quantum entanglement for imaging.

PAT combines optical and ultrasonic waves, overcoming the optical diffusion limit (~1 mm) with centimeter-scale deep penetration, high ultrasonic resolution, and optical contrast. Applications include early cancer detection and brain imaging. The annual PAT conference, a part of SPIE’s Photonics West, has been a significant event since 2010.

CUP, with a single exposure, captures transient events on a femtosecond scale. Unlike other ultrafast imagers requiring active illumination, CUP is receive-only and can be paired with various front optics, from microscopes to telescopes, facilitating diverse applications in fundamental and applied sciences, including biology and cosmophysics.

Quantum imaging utilizing Heisenberg scaling enhances spatial resolution linearly with the number of quanta, outperforming the standard quantum scaling’s square-root improvement.

Biology is a typical discipline covering multiple scales. While cryo-EM and super-resolution imaging enables intracellular imaging of proteins and organelles in microscale, CT and MRI facilitates organ-level imaging in macroscale at tissue resolution. There has long been a missing gap of imaging instruments in mesoscale to observe the large-scale interactions of cells, which is the basic unit of life, in the native mammalian environment during diverse pathological and physiological states. In this talk, I will share our long journey in the past decades for the development of mesoscale intravital fluorescence microscopy and analysis algorithms. While we have exploited some preliminary applications in neuroscience, oncology, immunology, and pharmacy, we believe there is a great treasure awaits discovery.