Surface plasmon resonance imaging by holographic enhanced mapping.

Area of Science:

• Optics and Photonics
• Biomedical Engineering
• Materials Science

Background:

• Surface Plasmon Resonance Imaging (SPRi) is a key technique for label-free detection of refractive index changes, concentration variations, and thin film mapping.
• Conventional SPR sensors often rely on either amplitude or phase contrast detection, each having limited optimal sensitivity ranges.
• Prism-based SPR configurations can introduce limitations such as magnification issues and image distortion.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design, construct, and test a novel holographic surface plasmon resonance (HoloSPR) microscope.
• To achieve simultaneous amplitude-contrast and phase-contrast SPR imaging using an objective-based configuration.
• To overcome the limitations of existing SPRi techniques and provide a versatile, high-throughput imaging method.

Main Methods:

• Development of a holographic surface plasmon resonance (HoloSPR) objective-based microscope.
• Utilizing a high numerical aperture objective to eliminate prism-based configuration limitations.
• Performing holographic reconstructions of SPR images and real-time kinetic measurements.

Main Results:

• The HoloSPR microscope successfully achieved simultaneous amplitude-contrast and phase-contrast SPR imaging.
• The objective-based design provided highly magnified and distortion-free images.
• Demonstrated capability for versatile imaging and high-throughput SPR detection.

Conclusions:

• The developed HoloSPR microscope offers a significant advancement in SPR imaging technology.
• It provides a complementary approach to conventional SPR techniques, enhancing detection capabilities.
• HoloSPR enables versatile, high-throughput, label-free analysis with improved image quality.