IROCSIM

Fluorescent microscopy is an indispensable tool in biology and medicine that has fueled many breakthroughs in a wide set of sub-domains. Recently the world of microscopy has witnessed a true revolution in terms of increased resolution of fluorescent imaging techniques. To break the intrinsic diffraction limit of the conventional microscope, several advanced super-resolution techniques were developed, some of which have even been awarded with the Nobel Prize in 2014. High resolution microscopy is also responsible for the spectacular cost reduction of DNA sequencing during the last decade. Yet, these techniques remain largely locked-up in specialized laboratories as they require bulky, expensive instrumentation and highly skilled operators. The next big push in microscopy with a large societal impact will come from extremely compact and robust optical systems that will make high-resolution (fluorescence) microscopy highly accessible, enabling both cellular diagnostics at the point of care and the development of compact, cost-effective DNA sequencing instruments, facilitating early diagnosis of cancer and other genomic disorders. IROCSIM will facilitate this next breakthrough by introducing a novel high-resolution imaging platform based entirely on an intimate marriage of active on-chip photonics and CMOS image sensors. This concept will completely eliminate the necessity of standard free-space optical components by integrating specially designed structured optical illumination, illumination modulation, an excitation filter and an image sensor in a single chip. The resulting platform will enable high resolution, fast, robust, zero-maintenance, and inexpensive microscopy with applications reaching from cellomics to DNA sequencing, proteomics, and highly parallelized optical biosensors.