OPTBIO Highlights

The OPTBIO JRA provides a Europe-wide concerted effort to improve laser-based methods in biomedicine and to offer access for the biomedical community to state-of-the-art instruments.

The first objective of OPTBIO addresses the need of efficient handling of tiny biological objects such as individual cells or even molecules, strands of DNA and polymer strings, and to simultaneously perform advanced optical and mechanical measurements on them. In this area, significant progress has been done by LENS, LCVU, FORTH, CLF and ICFO.

The second objective is to bring significant improvement in capacities for advanced imaging beyond what is commercially available and to the development of novel methodologies for the investigation of living cells and animals. LCVU and ICFO set important steps in the development of multiphoton microscopy and in developing microscopy workstations with extended spatial resolution, whereas ILC focussed on non-label methodologies. FORTH developed a workstation for combined twophoton and second and third harmonic generation microscopy and LENS and ICFO exploited second harmonic generation to image and measure structural dynamics of living muscle and neuronal cells. Finally POLIMI designed and developed a first version of a pump-probe system to perform transient absorption in real-time.

The third objective is focussed on biomedical imaging and is moving the capacity from point measurements into imaging. POLIMI and LLC developed and potentiated their timeresolved diffuse spectroscopy systems leading to great increase in dynamic range and reduction in acquisition time. FORTH has been adapting multispectral capabilities to their existing tomographic device; LENS coupled two photon imaging to laser-induced lesions to perform in vivo multiphoton nanosurgery in living mice brain; and ICFO used different techniques to image at high resolution the process of nanoneurosurgery on the C. elegans nematode. Finally, UL studied in vivo skin autofluorescence bleaching as function of irradiation power and dose and VULRC developed a scanning multispectral imaging system.

Coupling of two photon imaging with laser-induced lesions allows in vivo multiphoton nanosurgery in living mice brain. 20 um z-projections show the degeneration of the distal portion of a climbing fiber after nanodissection.