OptoMechanical Modulation Tomography for Ungated Compressive Cardiac Light Sheet Microscopy

OptoMechanical Modulation Tomography (OMMT) is a compressed sensing optical microscopy method where measurements are obtained by scanning a light sheet through a sample while modulating its intensity over the course of the camera integration time. Because mechanical scanning is not instantaneous, this method was so far considered unsuitable for imaging dynamic samples. Yet living samples would particularly benefit from the method’s reduced light exposure. In this paper we extend OMMT to allow imaging of objects that have a periodic motion, such as the heart in transparent larvae. We derived a method in which measurements are obtained by integrating the space-phase domain along patterned paths. We implemented the reconstruction with an iterative solver, and demonstrated the feasibility of the method based on simulated data of a beating heart. We observed that compression factors up to 8 lead to reliable reconstruction, and that the method is robust to uncertain acquisition start phases. Our results confirm that OMMT can be extended to imaging dynamic samples opening up the possibility to apply this method in experimental settings where low light exposure is desirable.