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In vivo fluorescence imaging with high-resolution microlenses

Nature Methods volume 6, pages 511–512 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

Micro-optics are increasingly used for minimally invasive in vivo imaging, in miniaturized microscopes and in lab-on-a-chip devices. Owing to optical aberrations and lower numerical apertures, a main class of microlens, gradient refractive index lenses, has not achieved resolution comparable to conventional microscopy. Here we describe high-resolution microlenses, and illustrate two-photon imaging of dendritic spines on hippocampal neurons and dual-color nonlinear optical imaging of neuromuscular junctions in live mice.

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Figure 1: Aberration-corrected micro-objectives enable high-resolution imaging.
Figure 2: In vivo two-photon imaging with high-resolution micro-objectives permits superior resolution than with uncorrected GRIN lenses and enables visualization of neuronal dendritic spines.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (M.J.S.), GRINTech GmbH (B.M.) and the Stanford Biophysics (R.P.J.B.) training grant from the US National Institutes of Health for support of our work. We thank A. Attardo, L.D. Burns, E. Ho, J. Kobelke, S. Plochowietz and D. Profitt for technical assistance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. James H. Clark Center for Biomedical Engineering and Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA

    Robert P J Barretto & Mark J Schnitzer

  2. GRINTECH GmbH, Jena, Germany

    Bernhard Messerschmidt

  3. Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA

    Mark J Schnitzer

Authors
  1. Robert P J Barretto
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  2. Bernhard Messerschmidt
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  3. Mark J Schnitzer
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Correspondence to Mark J Schnitzer.

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Barretto, R., Messerschmidt, B. & Schnitzer, M. In vivo fluorescence imaging with high-resolution microlenses. Nat Methods 6, 511–512 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.1339

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