Photonic-crystal-fiber platform for multicolor multilabel neurophotonic studies

Abstract

A supercontinuum source based on a highly nonlinear photonic-crystal fiber (PCF) is combined with a hollow-core photonic-band-gap fiber (PBGF) spectral filter for a multiplex, high-repetition-rate fiber-based interrogation of fluorescent-protein neuron-activity reporters, and fluorophore conjugate antibody labels in the brain of transgenic mice. The hollow PBGF selects those parts of the supercontinuum output of the highly nonlinear PCF that can efficiently excite the fluorescence of the biomarkers but supports no guidance within the bands, where the supercontinuum light scattered by the brain tissues could hinder the detection of the fluorescence response of the biomarkers, thus allowing a high-contrast detection of well-resolved responses from each type of biomarkers.