Towards Single‐ Photon Microscopy: Exploiting Extra Spatio‐Temporal Information Provided by SPAD Array Detectors in Laser Scanning Microscopy
10:30 - 10:50
Giorgio Tortarolo, Marco Castello, Sami Koho, Mauro Buttafava, Eli Slenders, Alessandro Rossetta, Paolo Bianchini, Federica Villa, Alberto Diaspro, Alberto Tosi and Giuseppe Vicidomini Laser scanning microscopy uses single-element detectors to record the fluorescent light generated by raster scanning an excitation spot across the sample. Since such a detector spatially and temporally integrates the light at any sample position, important information are cancelled out. To address this limitation, we replace the single-element detector with a SPAD array detector.
The novel spatial information allows improving the resolution of confocal microscopy, mitigating photo-damaging in STED microscopy, and compensating aberrations in TPE microscopy. The temporal information allows to combine intensity and fluorescence lifetime imaging. Lastly, we discuss the application of the proposed microscope in single-molecule imaging/tracking/spectroscopy."
