A team at Tsinghua University has developed Airscope, a 1-gram wireless mesoscopic microscope, with the results published in Nature

How to clearly "see" how neurons in the brain regulate complex behaviors in natural and social behaviors is an important foundation for understanding intelligence. Chinese scientists have developed the world's lightest wireless mesoscopic microscope, weighing only 1 gram, which can record neural activity in the mouse cerebral cortex at single-cell resolution within a 6-millimeter field of view, recording more than 8,500 neurons simultaneously in a single mouse—25 times that of existing devices of the same type. The results were published online in Nature on the 19th.

Enabling a microscope to simultaneously "see widely, see clearly, be worn lightly, and be untethered" is a major challenge in neuroscience research. Although existing microscopes capable of resolving individual neurons can see clearly, they often require fixing the mouse's head under the instrument or "tethering" it with cables, which makes it difficult to study some of the animals' complex natural behaviors; although head-mounted miniature microscopes do not require tethering the animals with cables, their field of view is usually less than 1 millimeter, allowing only a very small brain region to be seen. To simultaneously cover a larger cortical area while achieving higher-definition resolution, a heavier microscope with greater power consumption is required.

Photo shows a mouse wearing Airscope freely exploring in a laboratory-built scene. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Wei Mengjia

To this end, the team of Dai Qionghai, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and professor at Tsinghua University, collaborated with the team of Dai Pu at the Chinese PLA General Hospital to develop the ultra-light wireless mesoscopic microscope Airscope through integrated design and systematic optimization. Using only 4 aspherical lenses, it achieves observation at single-cell resolution (i.e., 4 to 6 micrometers) within a 6-millimeter field of view.

"Wireless, lightweight, wide field of view, and high throughput are the notable features of Airscope," introduced Wu Jiamin, associate professor in the Department of Automation at Tsinghua University. Conventional head-mounted miniature microscopes usually weigh more than 3 grams, which affects the mice's free movement. Airscope not only breaks free from cable constraints and is more compact in size, but also achieves on-device compression through a 2-megapixel image sensor, enabling wireless transmission of megapixel-level images.

Image shows observed images of mouse brain neurons. (Provided by the research team)

With this animal "wearable" device, the team completed many experiments that were previously difficult to achieve due to limitations of cables or device weight, such as simultaneously recording cortical activity in multiple mice exploring a 5-square-meter natural habitat; and tracking mice's long-term autonomous exploration in a large maze with 32 endpoints.

Dai Qionghai believes that this new microscope provides a new tool for understanding the neural basis of intelligence and will promote the development of optical brain-computer interfaces toward more precise neural probing. In the future, its applications are expected to expand from neuroscience to fields such as immunology and oncology, achieving complete tracking of disease occurrence processes.

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A team at Tsinghua University has developed Airscope, a 1-gram wireless mesoscopic microscope, with the results published in Nature

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