Dynamic In Vivo Microscopy of Embryonic Heart Morphogenesis and Function

Michael Liebling
UC Santa Barbara

Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 3:00pm
Engr IV Maxwell Room 57-124

Abstract

The developing vertebrate heart is highly dynamic: it is beating throughout its maturation from a tube to a multi-chambered organ. This makes time-lapse imaging particularly challenging since conventional techniques are not suited for handling samples that undergo motions at both slow and rapid scales. We have developed in vivo image acquisition, processing, and analysis tools to digitally document both morphogenesis and function in the developing heart of zebrafish, quail, and rodent embryos. I will present our strategy to capture and integrate images from multiple microscopy modalities (including widefield and confocal microscopy as well as optical coherence tomography), at multiple temporal and spatial scales (from milliseconds to hours and from single cells to entire organs), and in multiple dimensions. These techniques reveal cellular events (such as cells migrating or dividing on the surface of the beating heart) yet do not perturb the heart beat. They open the prospect of studying normal and abnormal heart development in vivo with minimal invasiveness.

Biography

Michael Liebling studied Physics (MS, 2000) at EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland) where he received the Dr. ès sc. degree (PhD, 2004) for a dissertation on image processing and digital holography. From 2004 to 2007, he was a postdoctoral scholar at the Biological Imaging Center, Beckman Institute, California Institute of Technology. In 2007, he joined the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) as an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. His research focuses on biological image acquisition, reconstruction, processing, and analysis, more specifically, on developing novel microscopy instrumentation and computational tools to enable dynamic, multi-modal, and in vivo imaging of dynamic biological processes.