Integrated photoacoustic, confocal, and two-photon microscope

The invention of green fluorescent protein and other molecular fluorescent probes has promoted applications of confocal and two-photon fluorescence microscopy in biology and medicine. However, exogenous fluorescence contrast agents may affect cellular structure and function, and fluorescence microscopy cannot image nonfluorescent chromophores. We overcome this limitation by integrating optical-resolution photoacoustic microscopy into a modern Olympus IX81 confocal, two-photon, fluorescence microscope setup to provide complementary, label-free, optical absorption contrast. Automatically coregistered images can be generated from the same sample. Imaging applications in ophthalmology, developmental biology, and plant science are demonstrated. For the first time, in a familiar microscopic fluorescence imaging setting, this trimodality microscope provides a platform for future biological and medical discoveries.