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I am currently a Ph.D candidate in Manufacturing Engineering of Boston University. I met Dr. Charles Lin when I was working on a retinal imaging project for my master degree. My thesis project involved the d esign and fabrication of a complex system for in-vivo microscopic imaging of mouse retinas using adaptive optics. This work was interdisciplinary and challenging, entailing fundamental research in optical microscopy, laser scanning, micromachined deformable mirror control, and image processing. After finished my Master degree from BU, I began to work on an adaptive optics two-photon scanning laser fluorescence microscope in Dr. Lin's laboratory. |
Can adaptive optics significantly increase performance of a two-photon microscope? This is the question we are trying to answer. Because two photons need to be absorbed to excite a fluorophore, the probability of fluorescence emission of a detectable photon scales with the intensity squared of the beam. As a result, aberrations in the beam path that reduce the peak intensity of the focused, scanned laser spot have a significant effect on the instrument performance. Methods for reducing those aberrations should allow higher resolution and detection sensitivity, and deeper tissue imaging.
In order to improve the imaging performance, I am working to develop a two photon microscope that has an adaptive optics (AO) subsystem to compensate for beam path aberrations. The AO system will rely on a 140 actuator deformable mirror, controlled using a stochastic parallel gradient descent algorithm with feedback from a fluorescence sensor. The controlled instrument will be used for in vivo imaging of mouse skin, lymph nodes, and skull bone marrow. We envision that in the future the AO system will be an integral component of a multimodality imaging system combining confocal, two photon, second/third harmonic generation and Coherent anti-Stokes Raman (CARS) contrast mechanisms.
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