Abstract

Label-free optical microscopy plays an important role in biological research. Coherent Raman microscopy combines three-dimensional resolution and fast image acquisition with molecular selectivity based on the vibrational spectrum of the sample. During the last years stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) microscopy has become an important technique in this framework since it does not display an electronic nonresonant background signal and enhances quantitative data analysis. In this method, the energy difference of two quasi-monochromatic beams is tuned to be resonant with a vibrational resonance leading to an energy transfer from the pump to the Stokes field in presence of SRS. To optimize the image acquisition time, we employed Nyquist frequency modulation with boxcar averaging of the signal.

© 2017 IEEE