Integrated single- and two-photon light sheet microscopy using accelerating beams

The authors thank the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (grant EP/J01771/X) and the European Union project FAMOS (FP7 ICT, contract no. 317744) for funding. P.P. acknowledges funding by the Estonian Research Council (grants PUTJD8 and PUT369).We demonstrate the first light sheet microscope using propagation invariant, accelerating Airy beams that operates both in single- and two-photon modes. The use of the Airy beam permits us to develop an ultra compact, high resolution light sheet system without beam scanning. In two-photon mode, an increase in the field of view over the use of a standard Gaussian beam by a factor of six is demonstrated. This implementation for light sheet microscopy opens up new possibilities across a wide range of biomedical applications, especially for the study of neuronal processes.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Correlated Multimodal Imaging in Life Sciences:Expanding the Biomedical Horizon

International audienceThe frontiers of bioimaging are currently being pushed toward the integration and correlation of several modalities to tackle biomedical research questions holistically and across multiple scales. Correlated Multimodal Imaging (CMI) gathers information about exactly the same specimen with two or more complementary modalities that-in combination-create a composite and complementary view of the sample (including insights into structure, function, dynamics and molecular composition). CMI allows to describe biomedical processes within their overall spatio-temporal context and gain a mechanistic understanding of cells, tissues, diseases or organisms by untangling their molecular mechanisms within their native environment. The two best-established CMI implementations for small animals and model organisms are hardware-fused platforms in preclinical imaging (Hybrid Imaging) and Correlated Light and Electron Microscopy (CLEM) in biological imaging. Although the merits of Preclinical Hybrid Imaging (PHI) and CLEM are well-established, both approaches would benefit from standardization of protocols, ontologies and data handling, and the development of optimized and advanced implementations. Specifically, CMI pipelines that aim at bridging preclinical and biological imaging beyond CLEM and PHI are rare but bear great potential to substantially advance both bioimaging and biomedical research. CMI faces three mai

Three-dimensional optical coherence tomography at 1050nm versus 800nm in retinal pathologies: enhanced performance and choroidal penetration in cataract patients

Frequency domain optical coherence tomography (FD-OCT), based on an all-reflective high-speed InGaAs spectrometer, operating in the 1050 nm wavelength region for retinal diagnostics, enables high-speed, volumetric imaging of retinal pathologies with greater penetration into choroidal tissue is compared to conventional 800 nm three-dimensional (3-D) ophthalmic FD-OCT systems. Furthermore, the lower scattering at this wavelength significantly improves imaging performance in cataract patients, thereby widening the clinical applicability of ophthalmic OCT. The clinical performance of two spectrometer-based ophthalmic 3-D OCT systems compared in respect to their clinical performance, one operating at 800 nm with 150 nm bandwidth (~

Full-field time-encoded frequency-domain optical coherence tomography

Ultrahigh axial resolution surface profiling as well as volumetric optical imaging based on time encoded optical coherence tomography in the frequency domain without any mechanical scanning element is presented. A frequency tuned broad bandwidth titanium sapphire laser is interfaced to an optical microscope (Axioskop 2 MAT, Carl Zeiss Meditec) that is enhanced with an interferometric imaging head. The system is equipped with a 640 x 480 pixel CMOS camera, optimized for the 800 nm wavelength tuning range for transmission and reflection measurements of a microscopic sample. Sample volume information over 1.3 x 1 x 0.2 m