Imaging of Caenorhabditis Elegans with Near Infrared Spectrally Encoded Confocal Microscopy

Caenorhabditis elegans is an optically transparent nematode that shares many gene orthologs and homologs with humans. C. elegans is widely used in large populations for genetic studies relevant to human biology and disease. Success of such studies frequently relies on the ability to image C. elegans structure at high-resolution and high-speed. This thesis reports on the feasibility of a high-speed variant of reflectance confocal microscopy, known as spectrally encoded confocal microscopy (SECM), for label-free imaging of C. elegans. The developed system utilizes near-infrared illumination in conjunction with refractive and diffractive optics to instantaneously image a confocal image line at a speed of up to 147 kHz with lateral and axial resolutions of 2m and 10m, respectively. Our imaging results from wild-type C. elegans and four mutant strains demonstrate the ability of SECM in revealing the overall geometry, key internal organs, and mutation-induced structural variations.