Nanoscale Imaging of Biological Tissues: Techniques, Challenges and Emerging Frontiers

Nanoscale characterization of biological tissues bridges molecular identity with structural, mechanical, and chemical organization, enabling high-resolution insights into intact specimens. This review provides a comprehensive overview of the principal imaging modalities that resolve cellular and subcellular features in biological tissues. Electron microscopy techniques offer ultrastructural details and volumetric reconstructions with sectioning and tomography techniques. Optical nanoscopy approaches such as single-molecule localization microscopy, stimulated emission depletion microscopy, structural illumination microscopy, and expansion microscopy achieve fluorescence-based mapping with tens-of-nanometer precision. Complementary platforms like atomic force microscopy and nanoscale secondary ion mass spectrometry extend nanoscale characterization into mechanical and chemical domains. Artificial intelligence has emerged as a transformative tool for segmentation, image restoration, and volumetric reconstruction, addressing bottlenecks in throughput and interpretability. From practical applications on biological tissues, we evaluate each technique’s strengths, limitations, and potential for clinical applications. The review concludes with a discussion on emerging directions, including live-tissue nanoscopy, correlative light and electron microscopy, and machine-driven high-throughput imaging for further investigation of nanoscale biological structures and functions.