Quantum Multi-Photon Excitation Microscopy for Deep Tissue Imaging

At present, light-based imaging is limited in its ability to reach tissue below a few hundred microns using conventional single-photon confocal microscopy, or one millimeter using state-of-the-art multi-photon excitation microscopy. This team will develop quantum multi-photon excitation microscopy for centimeter-scale deep tissue imaging in complex living organisms with cellular resolution readouts.

Conventional optical microscopy is fundamentally limited by diffraction. Super-resolution microscopy has overcome this limit, but at the expense of throughput and signal-to-noise ratio. This team will overcome these challenges through a transformative new enabling technology: a new class of quantum light sources outputting coherent states of photonic dimers. Their second goal is to test the proposed light source using both photoacoustic microscopy and compressed ultrafast photography—the world’s fastest camera—to achieve super-resolution and deep-tissue imaging with high throughput and signal-to-noise ratio.