Arduino Due based tool to facilitate in vivo two-photon excitation microscopy

Pietro Artoni; Silvia Landi; Sebastian Sulis Sato; Stefano Luin; Gian Michele Ratto

doi:10.1364/BOE.7.001604

Arduino Due based tool to facilitate in vivo two-photon excitation microscopy

Biomed Opt Express. 2016 Mar 30;7(4):1604-13. doi: 10.1364/BOE.7.001604. eCollection 2016 Apr 1.

Authors

Pietro Artoni¹, Silvia Landi¹, Sebastian Sulis Sato¹, Stefano Luin¹, Gian Michele Ratto¹

Affiliation

¹ NEST, Istituto Nanoscienze CNR and Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, 56127 Italy.

Abstract

Two-photon excitation spectroscopy is a powerful technique for the characterization of the optical properties of genetically encoded and synthetic fluorescent molecules. Excitation spectroscopy requires tuning the wavelength of the Ti:sapphire laser while carefully monitoring the delivered power. To assist laser tuning and the control of delivered power, we developed an Arduino Due based tool for the automatic acquisition of high quality spectra. This tool is portable, fast, affordable and precise. It allowed studying the impact of scattering and of blood absorption on two-photon excitation light. In this way, we determined the wavelength-dependent deformation of excitation spectra occurring in deep tissues in vivo.

Keywords: (110.0110) Imaging systems; (110.0113) Imaging through turbid media; (180.0180) Microscopy; (190.0190) Nonlinear optics; (300.0300) Spectroscopy.