ABSTRACT
We report the observation of live-cell dynamics by noncontact scanning near-field optical microscopy (SNOM) modified to work with living biological samples that are fully immersed in liquid. We did not use the SNOM setup in strictly near-field conditions (we used 1-mum constant-height mode); however, we could examine the dynamics of rhythmically beating cardiac myocytes in culture with extremely high vertical sensitivity below the nanometric range. We could halt scans at any point to record localized contraction profiles of the cell membrane. We show that the contractions of the organisms changed shape dramatically within adjacent areas. We believe that the spatial dependency of the contractions arises because of the measurement system's ability to resolve the behavior of individual submembrane actin bundles. Our results, combining imaging and real-time recording in localized areas, reveal a new, to our knowledge, noninvasive method for using SNOM setups for studying the dynamics of live biological samples.
ABSTRACT
We report on the high-resolution observation of biological samples in water with a collection-mode near-field optical microscope (c-mode NOM) operating under optical feedback control. With rapidly decreasing evanescent field power used as the feedback signal, for the first time to our knowledge, an image of straight-type flagellar filaments of salmonella in water has been obtained. The estimated diameter of a single filament is around 55 nm with a pixel size of 10 nm. A comparison with its nominal value of 25 nm obtained from electron microscope observations under high vacuum confirms that our c-mode NOM performs high-resolution imaging in water.