Optofluidic Add-on Devices for Light Sheet Fluorescence Microscopy of Caenorhabditis Elegans with Conventional Wide-Field Microscopes

This research reports on the development of low-cost and compact optofluidic add-on devices for converting a conventional wide-field microscope to a light sheet fluorescence microscope for immobilization-free, rapid and continuous imaging of the C. elegans model organism. The developed Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)-based optofluidic devices consist of an integrated PDMS cylindrical lens for on-chip light-sheet generation and a microfluidics channel for flow-based translation of samples through the light sheet. Validation experiments on several strains of C. elegans demonstrated the ability of the developed imaging platform in volumetric imaging of the fluorescence expressions of entire worms in a few seconds, at the single-neuron resolution, and with high contrast. Also, results of the primary neurodegeneration study demonstrated the ability of the platform on quantifying the fluorescent expressions of the worms and detecting different neurotoxin-induced phenotypes.