Label-free imaging of melanoma with nonlinear photothermal microscopy

Nonlinear photothermal microscopy, in which the intensity of the pump heating beam is modulated at f and the photothermal signal is extracted from the probe beam with a lock-in amplifier referred to 2f, is applied to the imaging of mouse melanoma without any staining. The pump and probe pulses, with central wavelengths of 488 and 632 nm, and a pulse duration of ∼100  ps, are filtered from a compact commercial supercontinuum fiber laser source. An auto-balanced detector is applied to accumulate the signal and remove the laser noise of the probe. The spatial resolution of the nonlinear photothermal imaging is enhanced by ∼18% in both theoretical calculations and experiments, compared with a linear photothermal mechanism, and the resolution enhancement is theoretically ∼42% compared with conventional optical microscopy. This imaging technique shows possibilities for the clinical evaluation of melanoma with a high contrast and spatial resolution.