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Nonlinear Optical Microscopy Illuminates the Biophysics of Life
Watt W. Webb, Professor of Applied Physics, S.B. Eckert Professor in Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
May 18, 2007
Abstract
Our tissues are fluorescent and optically nonlinear. Therefore, nonlinear laser scanning focused illumination by mode-locked 100 femtosecond laser pulses can create 3-d resolved microscopic images of our tissues that reveal essential biophysics of our lives. Examples of applications of this Multiphoton Microscopy (MPM) to neural signaling, cancer detection, collagen damage, gene transcription in the cellular nucleus, cell membrane organization and thus generally the molecular dynamics of life are being researched. Now MPM is headed for direct medical application via our current developments of MPM Endoscopy to provide in vivo, real time microscopic imaging of internal tissues for medical diagnostics.
Biography
Watt Webb holds a B.S. and Sc.D. from MIT. He joined the Cornell faculty in 1961, served as director of the School of Applied and Engineering Physics from 1983-1989 and is a faculty member of eight graduate Fields. He directs the Developmental Resource for Biophysical Imaging Opto-Electronics, an NIH Biomedical Imaging Center. Prof. Webb pioneered the techniques of Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy (FCS) in 1969 and Multiphoton Microscopy (MPM) in 1990. FCS permits single-molecule detection in solutions at nanomolar concentrations and provides temporal resolution of the dynamic processes that can be signaled by the fluorescence signal. MPM significantly reduces photodamage and minimizes image degradation due to scattering and autofluorescence, and thereby enables high resolution, high signal-to-noise imaging in living cells and deep in turbid tissues in vivo. His laboratory at Cornell University continues to extend the frontiers of these technologies.