Award ceremony to take place on March 29th in Munich

For the invention of the ultra-high-resolution research camera LINCam, the company spin-off Photonscore GmbH by Dr. Ing. Werner Zuschratter and his team from the Leibniz Institute of Neurobiology (LIN) were nominated for the German Innovation Award. In the category "start-ups" they have made it into the top three. Where they will place, they will learn at the price giving ceremony on March 29 in Munich.

In the special laboratory of electron and laser scanning microscopy, the team led by Dr. Ing. Werner Zuschratter, dr. Yury Prokazov and Evgeny Turbin developed in years of research a particularly sensitive camera with a particularly high temporal resolution. "Cells and tissues only tolerate a certain amount of light. Using too much of it harms this valuable biological material as you observe it. However, our camera has such a sensitive sensor that it is the only system capable of producing images below this critical light limit", says Zuschratter. The LINCam operates below the threshold for living cells of 100 mW / cm².

The camera developed at the LIN is a quantum detector with about one million pictures per second. It captures only a single light particle at a time and measures the arrival of these individual photons with a time resolution of 50 picoseconds. The images are then generated from the registered light quanta on the computer.

"Currently, we use the LINCam primarily to see how molecules interact within synapses in the nervous and immune systems", explains the neurobiologist Zuschratter. But there are also numerous applications in other areas: In future, research projects together with the Medical Faculty of the Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg will find out whether or to what extent the camera is suitable for detecting tumor tissue at an early stage. It should also be used in quantum optics. Zuschratter adds, "I am surprised that quantum physicists in particular are interested in our invention in order to use them to develop new quantum interference techniques for quantum computer research."

The LINCam is the further development of a laboratory model, for which the team 2013 the
1st place at the Hugo Junkers Prize for the most innovative project in basic research and in 2017 was awarded first prize in the category "Most Innovative Projects in Applied Research". The research camera has been built and marketed since 2017 by the spin-off Photonscore GmbH.

More about this camera you can learn in this video.

The inventors of the LINCam: Werner Zuschratter, Yury Prokazov und Evgeny Turbin (f.l.r.r.)