Another Treatment of Fluorescence Polarization Microspectroscopy and Imaging

Abstract

We here discuss a general (symmetry adapted) treatment for one-photon-excitation time-resolved fluorescence polarization microspectroscopy (TRFPM) at combined wide-angular excitation and detection apertures that correctly couples the principles of the optics of objective lenses with the principles of fluorescence spectroscopy with polarized light. The treatment is unified in the sense that it covers the electromagnetic description of focusing a linearly polarized beam of exciting light (diffraction theory, DT) and the description of the same problem in terms of the meridional plane properties (MPP) of the objective lenses (geometrical optics). It is shown that both approaches are quantitatively equivalent from the point of view of the polarization effects in typical TRFPM experiments on linear absorbers, despite the fact that in the MPP treatment the region of focus is treated as a pointlike object, while in the DT method the region of focus is characterized by a three-dimensional (3D) inhomogeneous electromagnetic field distribution, of generally ellipsoidal polarization at different points of the focus. This finding is essentially important from the point of view of the experimental practice because the MPP treatment is based on two very simple trigonometric expressions, in evident contrast to the DT method, in which the high-aperture focusing is described in terms of three complicated 3D integrals involving the Bessel functions of the first kind. A few words of comment are added on a similar problem in the case of nonlinear one-photon absorbers (e.g., chiral fluorophores). We discuss the synthetic fluorescence decays for the wide-field- and evanescent-wave-excitation confocal (or wide-field) detection fluorescence polarization microspectroscopy and imaging, which indicate the right experimental protocols for the kinetic and dynamic fluorescence polarization microspectroscopic studies. The manifestations of the effects resulting from the application of the wide-angular excitation and/or detection apertures are displayed and discussed in a systematic way. A few words of comment are added on the application of the symmetry adapted calibration (SAC) method to TRFPM experiments. A very important aim of this article is to provide a correct and more complete description of fluorescence polarization microspectroscopy and imaging of macroscopically isotropic media (i.e., solutions, solutions of labeled macromolecules, membrane suspensions, or biological cells), that can be immediately applied in the experimental practice in the life and medical sciences and also in different areas of nano(bio)technology.