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Summary: NEST Scientific Report 2007-2009
Monitoring brain function by in vivo 2-photon microscopy
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The instrument at the core of this activity is
the 2-photon microscope. This is a scanning
microscope where the light source is
provided by an ultrafast laser capable of
delivering short light pulses (about 150 fs).
Thanks to the high peak power, the near
IR radiation provided by the pulsed laser
is capable of exciting fluorofores that are
normally excited at visible wavelength.
The 2-photon microscope has several
crucial advantages over the one-photon
microscope: these features are instrumental
in allowing imaging in thick samples:
1) 2-photon excitation is a non-linear
phenomena that occurs only at the focal
plane, therefore, there is no need for
a spatial filter to remove out of focus
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