Spatiotemporal control of degenerate multiphoton fluorescence microscopy with delay-tunable femtosecond pulse pairs

Abstract

Selective excitation of a particular fluorophore in an ensemble of different fluorophores with overlapping fluorescence spectra is shown to be dependent on the time delay of femtosecond pulse pairs in multiphoton fluorescence microscopy. In particular, the two-photon fluorescence behavior of the Texas Red and DAPI dye pair inside Bovine Pulmonary Artery Endothelial (BPAE) cells depends strongly on the center wavelength of the laser, as well as the delay between two identical laser pulses in one-color femtosecond pulse-pair excitation scheme. Thus, we present a novel design concept using pairs of femtosecond pulses at different central wavelengths and tunable pulse separations for controlling the image contrast between two spatially and spectrally overlapping fluorophores. This femtosecond pulse-pair technique is unique in utilizing the variation of dye dynamics inside biological cells as a contrast mode in microscopy of different fluorophores.