Three-photon imaging of mouse brain structure and function through the intact skull.

Wang, Tianyu; Ouzounov, Dimitre G; Wu, Chunyan; Horton, Nicholas G; Zhang, Bin; Wu, Cheng-Hsun; Zhang, Yanping; Schnitzer, Mark J et al. · Nat Methods · 2018

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

Optical imaging through the intact mouse skull is challenging because of skull-induced aberrations and scattering. We found that three-photon excitation provided improved optical sectioning compared with that obtained with two-photon excitation, even when we used the same excitation wavelength and imaging system. Here we demonstrate three-photon imaging of vasculature through the adult mouse skull at >500-μm depth, as well as GCaMP6s calcium imaging over weeks in cortical layers 2/3 and 4 in awake mice, with 8.5 frames per second and a field of view spanning hundreds of micrometers.

Medical subject headings