- Yeh, Li-Hao;
- Ivanov, Ivan;
- Chandler, Talon;
- Byrum, Janie;
- Chhun, Bryant;
- Guo, Syuan-Ming;
- Foltz, Cameron;
- Hashemi, Ezzat;
- Perez-Bermejo, Juan;
- Wang, Huijun;
- Yu, Yanhao;
- Kazansky, Peter;
- Conklin, Bruce;
- Han, May;
- Mehta, Shalin
The dry mass and the orientation of biomolecules can be imaged without a label by measuring their permittivity tensor (PT), which describes how biomolecules affect the phase and polarization of light. Three-dimensional (3D) imaging of PT has been challenging. We present a label-free computational microscopy technique, PT imaging (PTI), for the 3D measurement of PT. PTI encodes the invisible PT into images using oblique illumination, polarization-sensitive detection and volumetric sampling. PT is decoded from the data with a vectorial imaging model and a multi-channel inverse algorithm, assuming uniaxial symmetry in each voxel. We demonstrate high-resolution imaging of PT of isotropic beads, anisotropic glass targets, mouse brain tissue, infected cells and histology slides. PTI outperforms previous label-free imaging techniques such as vector tomography, ptychography and light-field imaging in resolving the 3D orientation and symmetry of organelles, cells and tissue. We provide open-source software and modular hardware to enable the adoption of the method.