A bimodal fluorescence and phase microscope for time-lapse imaging of 3D multi-scattering objects

We present a diffraction-phase and fluorescence 3D microscope as novel bimodal imaging technique, which provides simultaneous phase and multi-color epi-fluorescence acquisitions of living multicellular samples. The instrument consists of an LED-array to acquire intensity images at different illumination angles and an epifluorescence setup for fluorescence excitation. The 3D sample's optical properties are reconstructed using the beam propagation method embedded inside a deep learning framework. To obtain the fluorescence reconstructions, we developed a novel incoherent model that takes into account the heterogeneous refractive indexes of the scattering sample. We validated the technique on long-term acquisitions of mouse embryos and 3D liver organoids under physiological conditions.