Optofluidic device for light-sheet fluorescence microscopy of C. elegans with a conventional wide-field microscope

This work reports on the development of a low-cost and compact optofluidic add-on device for converting a conventional wide-field microscope to a light sheet fluorescence microscope for immobilization-free imaging of the C. elegans model organism. The developed Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)-based optofluidic device consists of an integrated PDMS cylindrical lens for light-sheet generation and a microfluidics channel for flow-based translation of samples through the light sheet. Validation experiments on several strains of C. elegans demonstrate the ability of the device in volumetric imaging of the fluorescence expressions of entire worms in a few seconds, at the single-neuron resolution, and with high contrast.