Rapid imaging of surgical breast excisions using direct temporal sampling two photon fluorescent lifetime imaging

Two photon fluorescent lifetime imaging is a modality that enables depth-sectioned, molecularly-specific imaging of cells and tissue using intrinsic contrast. However, clinical applications have not been well explored due to low imaging speed and limited field of view, which make evaluating large pathology samples extremely challenging. To address these limitations, we have developed direct temporal sampling two photon fluorescent lifetime imaging (DTS-FLIM), a method which enables a several order of magnitude increase in imaging speed by capturing an entire lifetime decay in a single fluorescent excitation. We use this greatly increased speed to perform a preliminary study using gigapixel-scale imaging of human breast pathology surgical specimens.