UV-excited fluorophore images obtained with IR excitation
The widespread use of two-photon excitation fluorescence imaging has been somewhat inhibited by the necessity to use large, expensive, high-power, short-pulse lasers. These ultra-short pulse lasers are used as an excitation source in a raster scanning configuration to provide sufficient peak power density in a lens focal volume to generate detectable two-photon absorption events for rapid imaging. Biological studies often benefit from multiple fluorescent labels and multi-labelled samples often require different excitation wavelengths for adequate excitation of the various colored fluorophores. This is achieved inexpensively with the three Krypton Argon laser lines in standard confocal imaging systems, but multiple two-photon excitation lasers--if available-- would be a very expensive system. The lasers commonly used for two-photon imaging are tuneable, but this is not a non-trivial and time consuming process. The tuning range on these lasers allows good access to the blue-emitting and green-emitting fluorophores via two-photon excitation; however, we have found that a fixed-wavelength, compact,