About This Webinar
The brain is an enormously complex organ. To fully understand brain function, it is necessary to map out multiple cell types and subcellular features (e.g., dendrites and axons) and probe functional processes such as neuronal activation and oxygen delivery. Two-photon fluorescence (TPF) microscopy has played a crucial role in current investigations, due to the wide variety of synthetic dyes and proteins available for imaging brain cells and neuronal activities. However, the method has limited capability to resolve multiple features simultaneously. Dan Fu and his colleagues have attempted to address this problem by integrating label-free imaging capabilities into a TPF microscope. Their multimodal imaging platform combines TPF, stimulated Raman scattering, and transient absorption measurements using a dual-wavelength femtosecond laser. This system allows label-free measurement of global cell distribution, axon density, blood flow, and oxygen delivery on top of existing fluorescence imaging capabilities. Fu demonstrates how this platform can be used for in vivo mouse brain imaging through a cranial window to obtain new structural and functional information that is difficult to acquire in existing microscopic imaging systems.
***This presentation premiered during the 2021
BioPhotonics Conference. For more information on Photonics Media conferences, visit
events.photonics.com.
About the presenter:
Dan Fu, Ph.D., is assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Washington. He received his bachelor's degree from Peking University and his doctorate degree from Princeton University. For his doctoral research, under the supervision of professor Warren Warren, Fu developed label-free multiphoton absorption microscopy methods and applied them toward biological imaging. In 2009, he worked as a postdoctoral associate at the G.R. Harrison Spectroscopy Laboratory led by the late professor Michael Feld at MIT. In 2010, Fu moved to Harvard University to work with professor Sunney Xie as a postdoctoral fellow. There, Fu developed multiplex stimulated Raman scattering microscopy and hyperspectral stimulated Raman scattering microscopy. He joined the faculty of the University of Washington in 2015. His main research interests are the development and applications of quantitative chemical imaging tools to study various pathophysiological processes of living biological specimens at single-cell resolution. He is a recipient of the Beckman Young Investigator Award, the NSF Career Award, the NIH Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (MIRA), and the Eli Lilly Young Investigator Award.