Igor Shevkunov stares at a glowing image of glioblastoma cells, their shapes emerging like ghostly ripples in a pond—no dyes, no labels, no lenses. Just light and math. At Tampere University in Finland, Shevkunov and his team have built a new way to watch living cells in real time, hour after hour, using a method called SF-PULSE. It’s a breakthrough that could change how scientists study cancer, test drugs, and understand how cells live and die.
Most cell imaging today requires staining—adding chemical dyes that can alter or even kill cells. Others rely on bulky microscopes that don’t fit inside incubators, forcing researchers to move cells in and out for imaging, disrupting their environment. SF-PULSE solves both problems. It’s a lensless system small enough to fit inside a standard cell-culture incubator, and it captures detailed, quantitative images of living cells without touching them.
The magic lies in combining physics with artificial intelligence. Traditional lensless imaging struggles to extract clear data from a single image, often needing multiple shots or extra optical parts. SF-PULSE uses an AI-powered neural network that’s trained to reconstruct precise phase information—the tiny delays light experiences as it passes through transparent cells—from just one snapshot. This means researchers can now track changes in cell size, growth, and biomass over days, all from a single, uninterrupted setup.
The implications are immediate and far-reaching. In cancer research, for example, scientists can now follow individual glioblastoma cells—some of the most aggressive brain tumor cells—over time, watching how they divide, move, and respond to treatment. "Importantly, researchers can follow not only how a cell population changes, but also how individual cells grow, move, divide and gain or lose biomass over time," says Meenakshisundaram Kandhavelu, who leads the Molecular Signaling research group at Tampere University.
Because the system captures a wide field of view, it can monitor hundreds or even thousands of cells at once. That opens doors for automated drug testing, toxicity screening, and studies on how cells die—processes critical to developing safer, more effective medicines. The method was published in Applied Physics Letters in 2026, and the team is already exploring ways to turn it into a practical tool for labs and clinics.
This isn’t just a better microscope. It’s a new way to see life as it happens—quietly, continuously, and without interference. And as cell biology moves toward long-term, dynamic studies, tools like SF-PULSE may soon become standard in labs around the world.