We will present a new flexible laser source for multimodal Multiphoton excitation microscopy including CARS. It consists of a tuneable femtosecond-Ti:Sapphire laser and an optical parametric oscillator (OPO). The new OPO-design allows for high flexibility in pump- and output wavelengths giving rise to for instance image EGFP with the Ti:Sapphire and tdRFP with the OPO simultaneously. This is presented on living mouse brain tissue. The minimum energy difference between Ti:Sapphire and OPO-wavelengths achievable is 2500cm^-1. Thus CARS imaging of lipids is possible. Due to synchronous pumping of the OPO the pump- and OPO pulses are intrinsically locked in time to each other thus they can be brought to perfect overlap of pump and stokes pulses. Uncaging multiphoton microscopy is also possible with this system due to the low minimum OPO pump wavelength of 730nm.

Date Published: 13 February 2009
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 7183, Multiphoton Microscopy in the Biomedical Sciences IX, 718314 (13 February 2009); doi: 10.1117/12.808376

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7183:
Multiphoton Microscopy in the Biomedical Sciences IX
Ammasi Periasamy; Peter T. C. So, Editor(s)