Pulse-shaping-based microscopy

Broadband femtosecond laser sources have been frequently used in multiphoton fluorescence microscopy. An ultrabroadband source (>100nm) can access many fluorophores, but lacks the ability to do so selectively. Pulse-shaping techniques employed in the coherent control community can solve this problem.

Read about our recent collaborative work at the Laboratoire d'Optique et Biosciences, Ecole Polytechnique here. In this work we demonstrated that pulse-shaping techniques could be used to image GFP-labelled drosophila embryos with high selectivity for GFP and suppression of autofluorescence. The images below show the electric field applied by a Dazzler pulse-shaper amd the corresponding fluorescence images of the drosophila embryo. By applying the appropriate pulse-shape we effectively tune the second harmonic spectrum of the exciting light to preferentially excite GFP or autofluorescent species.