Accomplishments

Microscopy and Microbreams: Technological Research and Development

• The importance of laser-induced plasma formation was established as the primary process mediating most cellular microsurgery applications, and the physical mechanisms responsible for pulsed-laser ablation of tissues were comprehensively reviewed. (A. Vogel and V. Venugopalan 2003)
• Temporal dynamics of cell lysis spanning from nanoseconds-microseconds were characterized using pulsed laser microbeams and microscopic visualization methods (K. Rau et al. 2004); and general physical mechanisms governing laser cellular microsurgery were reviewed. (P.A. Quinto-Su and V. Venugopalan, 2007)
• A model for the reversible dissocation of collagen in tissues was proposed and evaluated using Multi-photon microscopy and optical clearing agents. (A. Yeh et al., 2003)
• The impact of pulse width on two photon fluorescence and second harmonic generation signals and imaging depth was determined for pulses ranging from sub-20 fs to 200 fs (at the specimen). (S. Tang et al., 2006)

Dr. Shuo Tang controls dispersion in the combined MPM-OCT microscope.

• A combined multi-photon and optical coherence microscope based on a 12 fs, broadband source was demonstrated to be capable of co-registered imaging of cells and subcellular structure with ~1.5 μm axial and ~0.5 μm transverse resolution. (S. Tang et al., 2006)
• The microscopic origin of subcellular scattering particles includes significant contributions from mitochondria and actin filaments, and not nuclear structures in studies using the co-registered MPM-OCT microscope and organelle-specific vital probes. (S. Tang et al., 2007)