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Called GLIM (gradient light interference microscopy), the method is claimed to solve the challenge of imaging thick, multicellular samples.

The new technique, published in Nature Communications, brought together electrical and computer engineering professor Gabriel Popescu and animal sciences professor Matthew Wheeler in a collaborative project through the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois (UI).

Some forms of biomedical microscopy require light to be shined through thin slices of tissue to produce an image, whereas others use chemical or physical markers that allow the operator to find specific objects within a thick sample, but those markers can be toxic to living tissue, Popescu said.

"When looking at thick samples with other methods, your image becomes washed out due to the light bouncing off of all surfaces in the sample," said graduate student Mikhail Kandel, the co-lead author of the study. "It is like looking into a cloud."