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Paper Abstract
Nonlinear imaging takes advantage of the localized nature of the interaction to achieve high spatial resolution, optical
sectioning, and deeper penetration in tissue. However, nonlinear contrast (other than fluorescence or harmonic
generation) is generally difficult to measure because it is overwhelmed by the large background of detected illumination
light. Especially challenging to measure is the nonlinear refractive index - accessing this quantity would allow the
extension of widely employed phase microscopy methods to the nonlinear regime. We have developed a technique to
suppress the background in these types of measurements by using femtosecond pulse shaping to encode nonlinear
interactions in background-free regions of the frequency spectrum. Using this individual pulse shaping based technique
we have been able to measure self-phase modulation (SPM) in highly scattering environments, such as biological tissue,
with very modest power levels. Using our measurement technique we have demonstrated strong intrinsic SPM signatures
of glutamate-induced neuronal activity in hippocampal brain slices. We have also extended this measurement method to
cross-phase modulation, the two-color analogue to SPM. The two-color approach dramatically improves the
measurement sensitivity by reducing undesired background and associated noise. We will describe the nonlinear phase
contrast measurement technique and report on its application for imaging neuronal activity.
Paper Details
Date Published: 9 June 2011
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 8086, Advanced Microscopy Techniques II, 80860O (9 June 2011); doi: 10.1117/12.889668
Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8086:
Advanced Microscopy Techniques II
Peter T. C. So; Emmanuel Beaurepaire, Editor(s)
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 8086, Advanced Microscopy Techniques II, 80860O (9 June 2011); doi: 10.1117/12.889668
Show Author Affiliations
Martin C. Fischer, Duke Univ. (United States)
Prathyush Samineni, Duke Univ. (United States)
Baolei Li, Duke Univ. (United States)
Prathyush Samineni, Duke Univ. (United States)
Baolei Li, Duke Univ. (United States)
Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8086:
Advanced Microscopy Techniques II
Peter T. C. So; Emmanuel Beaurepaire, Editor(s)
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