In vivo imaging-guided microsurgery based on femtosecond laser produced new fluorescent compounds in biological tissues.

Qiqi Sun,Zhenguo Wu,Zhongya Qin,Congping Chen,Sicong He,Yue Lin,Xuesong Li,Yi Luo,Jianan Y Qu,Wanjie Wu

doi:10.1364/boe.9.000581

Abstract

Femtosecond laser microsurgery has become an advanced method for clinical procedures and biological research. The tissue treated by femtosecond laser can become highly fluorescent, indicating the formation of new fluorescent compounds that can naturally label the treated tissue site. We systematically characterized the fluorescence signals produced by femtosecond laser ablation in biological tissues in vivo. Our findings showed that they possess unique fluorescence properties and can be clearly differentiated from endogenous signals and major fluorescent proteins. We further demonstrated that the new fluorescent compounds can be used as in vivo labelling agent for biological imaging and guided laser microsurgery.

Highlights

Femtosecond lasers used in multiphoton nonlinear optical microscopy have become indispensable tools for biological research [1]
Femtosecond laser microsurgery has become an advanced method for clinical procedures and biological research
The tissue treated by femtosecond laser can become highly fluorescent, indicating the formation of new fluorescent compounds that can naturally label the treated tissue site

Summary

Introduction

Femtosecond lasers used in multiphoton nonlinear optical microscopy have become indispensable tools for biological research [1]. Due to the highly localized nonlinear absorption process, femtosecond lasers are utilized in laser surgery to precisely cut and/or remove the targeted cells or tissue in vivo [3]. Previous studies have reported that the laser surgery site becomes highly fluorescent after laser ablation [6,7,9,10,11,12] These fluorescent compounds produced during laser surgery could be used as natural labeling agents for in vivo biological imaging and guided laser microsurgery, little studies have been conducted on characterizing the fluorescence properties and understanding their formation mechanism

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