A mouse brain blood vessel is shown at different points of its phosphorescence lifetime.
Scientists trying to decipher the microenvironment of living biological tissues now have a way of taking high-resolution, high-speed, three-dimensional images of their inner workings. Cornell researchers led by Chris Xu, associate professor of applied and engineering physics, have demonstrated a new imaging technique that can quickly provide information not only about light intensity but also its "lifetime" - how long it takes for a photon to be re-emitted after excitation. Their technique, detailed online Dec. Photonics, is called frequency-multiplexed multiphoton phosphorescence lifetime microscopy, and could prove especially useful for research in biological and medical imaging. In their experiments, they treated a mouse brain with a dye that exhibits varying phosphorescence lifetimes correlated with the amount of oxygen present in the microenvironment. This is a useful measure for biologists who, for example, look for disease states in the brain indicated by oxygen levels. They shined a beam consisting of hundreds of discrete points, simultaneously illuminated but each encoded with a unique frequency.
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