Daniel S. Elson, Ph.D.
Lecturer in Medical Imaging
Joint Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Department of Biosurgery and Surgical Technology
Imperial College London

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Multi-spectral and fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM) can provide information concerning, not only the localisation of specific fluorophores, but also the local fluorophore environment.  Further information may be obtained concerning structure and rotational mobility by adding polarisation resolution.  Such a multi-dimensional fluorescence imaging strategy may reveal intrinsic molecular contrast between different types and states of tissue when applied to tissue autofluorescence.  This talk will review recent progress at Imperial College London in both microscopy and endoscopy applied to intrinsic fluorescence contrast in various tissues including atherosclerotic plaques, cartilage, pancreas and cervical tissue.
 
This talk will also address developments in laser source and imaging technology for wide-field and scanning microscopy techniques, for time-resolved, spectrally-resolved and polarisation-resolved fluorescence imaging with optical sectioning.  Excitation spectroscopy is a particular challenge for confocal microscopy and for FLIM, owing to the limited spectral coverage of available excitation sources.  I will describe a continuously tunable ultrafast source based on continuum generation that may be electronically tuned and spans from 420-1200 nm.  We have applied this to wide-field and confocal microscopy and FLIM. A further significant challenge is to develop practical FLIM instrumentation with sufficiently fast excitation rates for in vivo imaging.  Recently we have demonstrated real-time FLIM at frame-rates up to 29 Hz and applied this technology to endoscopic imaging of unstained biological tissue.


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