Volumetric scattering microscopy reconstructs 3D fluorescence through biological media
Published in Journals, Scanners and Imaging, Tools.
Published November 1, 2026.
A Nature Communications study published today introduces volumetric scattering microscopy, an optical and computational approach to reconstruct three-dimensional fluorescence images through scattering biological material.
Gao and colleagues capture angular information encoded in scattered fluorescence and use computational reconstruction to recover volumetric structure. Their method operates without mechanical scanning or wavefront measurement, using an architecture based on standard epifluorescence microscopy.
The team demonstrated the approach in test phantoms, engineered cellular systems, excised tissues with volumetric muscle loss and intact Xenopus embryos. The reported results support improved optical sectioning and quantitative reconstruction under the tested scattering conditions.
This is a research imaging method, not a clinical diagnostic study. Demonstrations in embryos and excised tissue do not establish performance throughout adult organs or human patients. The peer-reviewed accepted article remains subject to editorial changes; an earlier version of the work appeared as a preprint in April 2026. The authors report no competing interests.
Source: Gao et al., Nature Communications, November 1, 2026.