München 2004 – scientific programme

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SYBP: Biophotonik

SYBP 1: Symposium Biophotonik

SYBP 1.1: Invited Talk

Thursday, March 25, 2004, 11:00–11:30, HS 224

Life at 10 GW/cm²: nonlinear optical microscopy of living tissue — •Winfried Denk — Department of Biomedical Optics, Max-Planck Institute for Medical Research, 69190 Heidelberg

Optical microscopy in living tissues benefits greatly from the particular properties of multi-photon absorption. Most useful is the confinement of excitation to the vicinity of the focus, which provides excitation-based optical sectioning. This allows 1) reduction of out-of-focus photodamage and photobleaching, 2) imaging of light sensitive tissue such as the retina, 3) efficient collection of scattered fluorescence light. Additional benefits derive from the deeper penetration of the longer-wavelength excitation light.

Multi-photon microscopy has been used to observe neuronal computation in dendrites in vivo and in explant preparations such as living slices from various regions of the brain and the whole-mount retina. As an example the computation of direction sensitivity in the retina will be discussed.