A wavelength agile 900 nm 2.5 kW peak power fiber laser is created by four-wave mixing (FWM) in a photonic crystal fiber (PCF), while amplifying a 1300 nm Fourier-domain mode-locked (FDML) laser. The FWM process is pumped by a home-built 1064 nm master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) laser and seeded by a home-built 1300 nm FDML laser, generating high power pulses at wavelengths, where amplification by active fiber media is difficult. The 900 nm pulses have a spectral linewidth of 70 pm, are tunable over 54 nm and have electronic pulse-to-pulse tuning capability. These pulses can be used for nonlinear imaging like two-photon or coherent anti-Stokes Raman microscopy (CARS) microscopy including spectro-temporal laser imaging by diffracted excitation (SLIDE) and time-encoded (Tico) stimulated Raman microscopy.
Raman microscopy has the potential of creating a molecular contrast in unstained tissue with high specificity at sub-cellular resolution. To overcome the low signal level in raster-scanned microscopy, commonly non-linear Raman techniques are employed. Imaging is usually performed in the CH-stretch region around 3000cm-1 with Raman contrast by spectral unmixing of the broadband lipid and protein Raman modes. Imaging in the fingerprint region around 1500cm-1 can yield higher information density due to the more specific molecular signatures. However, the problem is that in the fingerprint region the Raman signals are generally lower.
We present Raman imaging in the fingerprint region of unstained tumorous tissue samples from human pharynx biopsies employing the time-encoded (TICO) technique. We chose pharynx tissue because this sample location can be accessed by future TICO-Raman endoscopes. In our fiber-based TICO-Raman system the stimulated Raman gain (SRG) signal is encoded in time by a Raman pump laser (1065nm, 600ps pulse length) synchronized to a wavelength-swept Fourier-Domain Mode-Locked (FDML) fiber laser. We sample the fingerprint region between 1300cm-1 – 1900 cm-1 with shot-noise limited sensitivity by employing a dual-balanced, digital and analogue balanced detector. The Stokes laser is a newly developed dispersion compensated FDML laser providing ultra-low noise and long coherence length at 400kHz sweep frequency and 100nm span around 1300nm. We investigate the possibility of applying higher instantaneous powers to increase the signal-to-noise ratio for imaging by lowering the relative shot-noise level suitable for detecting weak, narrowband Raman transitions in the fingerprint region.
Two-Photon Microscopy (TPM) can provide three-dimensional morphological and functional contrast in vivo. Through proper staining, TPM can be utilized to create virtual, HE equivalent images and thus can improve throughput in histology-based applications. We previously reported on a new light source for TPM that employs a compact and robust fiber-amplified, directly modulated laser. This laser is pulse-to-pulse wavelength switchable between 1064 nm, 1122 nm, and 1186 nm with an adjustable pulse duration from 50ps to 5ns and arbitrary repetition rates up to 1MHz at kW-peak powers. Despite the longer pulse duration, it can achieve similar average signal levels compared to fs-setups by lowering the repetition rate to achieve similar cw and peak power levels. The longer pulses lead to a larger number of photons per pulse, which yields single shot fluorescence lifetime measurements (FLIM) by applying a fast 4 GSamples/s digitizer. In the previous setup, the wavelengths were limited to 1064 nm and longer. Here, we use four wave mixing in a non-linear photonic crystal fiber to expand the wavelength range down to 940 nm. This wavelength is highly suitable for imaging green fluorescent proteins in neurosciences and stains such as acridine orange (AO), eosin yellow (EY) and sulforhodamine 101 (SR101) used for histology applications. In a more compact setup, we also show virtual HE histological imaging using a direct 1030 nm fiber MOPA.
Newly developed microscopy methods have the goal to give researches in bio-molecular science a better understanding of processes ongoing on a cellular level. Especially two-photon excited fluorescence (TPEF) microscopy is a readily applied and widespread modality. Compared to one photon fluorescence imaging, it is possible to image not only the surface but also deeper lying structures. Together with fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM), which provides information on the chemical composition of a specimen, deeper insights on a molecular level can be gained. However, the need for elaborate light sources for TPEF and speed limitations for FLIM hinder an even wider application. In this contribution, we present a way to overcome this limitations by combining a robust and inexpensive fiber laser for nonlinear excitation with a fast analog digitization method for rapid FLIM imaging. The applied sub nanosecond pulsed laser source is perfectly suited for fiber delivery as typically limiting non-linear effects like self-phase or cross-phase modulation (SPM, XPM) are negligible. Furthermore, compared to the typically applied femtosecond pulses, our longer pulses produce much more fluorescence photons per single shot. In this paper, we show that this higher number of fluorescence photons per pulse combined with a high analog bandwidth detection makes it possible to not only use a single pulse per pixel for TPEF imaging but also to resolve the exponential time decay for FLIM. To evaluate our system, we acquired FLIM images of a dye solution with single exponential behavior to assess the accuracy of our lifetime determination and also FLIM images of a plant stem at a pixel rate of 1 MHz to show the speed performance of our single pulse two-photon FLIM (SP-FLIM) system.
Modern biomedical imaging modalities aim to provide researchers a multimodal contrast for a deeper insight into a
specimen under investigation. A very promising technique is stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) microscopy, which can
unveil the chemical composition of a sample with a very high specificity. Although the signal intensities are enhanced
manifold to achieve a faster acquisition of images if compared to standard Raman microscopy, there is a trade-off between
specificity and acquisition speed. Commonly used SRS concepts either probe only very few Raman transitions as the
tuning of the applied laser sources is complicated or record whole spectra with a spectrometer based setup. While the first
approach is fast, it reduces the specificity and the spectrometer approach records whole spectra -with energy differences
where no Raman information is present-, which limits the acquisition speed. Therefore, we present a new approach based
on the TICO-Raman concept, which we call sparse-sampling. The TICO-sparse-sampling setup is fully electronically
controllable and allows probing of only the characteristic peaks of a Raman spectrum instead of always acquiring a whole
spectrum. By reducing the spectral points to the relevant peaks, the acquisition time can be greatly reduced compared to a
uniformly, equidistantly sampled Raman spectrum while the specificity and the signal to noise ratio (SNR) are maintained.
Furthermore, all laser sources are completely fiber based. The synchronized detection enables a full resolution of the
Raman signal, whereas the analogue and digital balancing allows shot noise limited detection. First imaging results with
polystyrene (PS) and polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) beads confirm the advantages of TICO sparse-sampling. We
achieved a pixel dwell time as low as 35 μs for an image differentiating both species. The mechanical properties of the
applied voice coil stage for scanning the sample currently limits even faster acquisition.
We present an entirely fiber based laser source for non-linear imaging with a novel approach for multi-color excitation. The high power output of an actively modulated and amplified picosecond fiber laser at 1064 nm is shifted to longer wavelengths by a combination of four-wave mixing and stimulated Raman scattering. By combining different fiber types and lengths, we control the non-linear wavelength conversion in the delivery fiber itself and can switch between 1064 nm, 1122 nm, and 1186 nm on-the-fly by tuning the pump power of the fiber amplifier and modulate the seed diodes. This is a promising way to enhance the applicability of short pulsed laser diodes for bio-molecular non-linear imaging by reducing the spectral limitations of such sources. In comparison to our previous work [1, 2], we show for the first time two-photon imaging with the shifted wavelengths and we demonstrate pulse-to-pulse switching between the different wavelengths without changing the configuration.
Two-photon excited fluorescence (TPEF) microscopy and fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM) are powerful imaging techniques in bio-molecular science. The need for elaborate light sources for TPEF and speed limitations for FLIM, however, hinder an even wider application. We present a way to overcome this limitations by combining a robust and inexpensive fiber laser for nonlinear excitation with a fast analog digitization method for rapid FLIM imaging. The applied sub nanosecond pulsed laser source is synchronized to a high analog bandwidth signal detection for single shot TPEF- and single shot FLIM imaging. The actively modulated pulses at 1064nm from the fiber laser are adjustable from 50ps to 5ns with kW of peak power. At a typically applied pulse lengths and repetition rates, the duty cycle is comparable to typically used femtosecond pulses and thus the peak power is also comparable at same cw-power. Hence, both types of excitation should yield the same number of fluorescence photons per time on average when used for TPEF imaging. However, in the 100ps configuration, a thousand times more fluorescence photons are generated per pulse. In this paper, we now show that the higher number of fluorescence photons per pulse combined with a high analog bandwidth detection makes it possible to not only use a single pulse per pixel for TPEF imaging but also to resolve the exponential time decay for FLIM. To evaluate the performance of our system, we acquired FLIM images of a Convallaria sample with pixel rates of 1 MHz where the lifetime information is directly measured with a fast real time digitizer. With the presented results, we show that longer pulses in the many-10ps to nanosecond regime can be readily applied for TPEF imaging and enable new imaging modalities like single pulse FLIM.
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