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Project

Label-free imaging of cellular activity using second harmonic generation

The ability to treat neurological and psychiatric disorders is still being hindered by a fundamental lack of knowledge of the human brain. Moreover, the aging population will cause an even higher societal burden to come up with effective treatments for our nearest and dearest. The enormous amount of brain cells, which are moreover highly interconnected ask for a diagnostic tool with three important properties. The spatial resolution should be smaller than an individual cell in order to see how cellular activity is transferred between neuronal networks. The temporal resolution should be in the millisecond range because of the rapid timescale of action potential trains, and the technique should be able to simultaneously record multiple cells that form networks. The fundamental caveat seems to be offering all three of these properties in a non-invasive way. We hypothesize that label-free second harmonic generation imaging can emerge as an innovative method for monitoring the activity of multiple neurons within a network at high optical and temporal resolution in vitro, based on the electric fields residing at the cell membrane interface. By careful design of experiments on model systems and cross-validation between different work packages, we will be able to calibrate and fully describe a label-free SHG imaging and apply it on neuronal cell cultures.

Date:1 Oct 2021 →  Today
Keywords:label-free voltage-imaging, Nonlinear optics, Asymmetric cell membrane
Disciplines:Electrostatics, Optical properties and interactions with radiation, Surfaces, interfaces, 2D materials, Nonlinear optics and spectroscopy, Optical properties of materials