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Hybrid photoacoustic and optical imaging of pigments in vegetative tissues
Author(s) -
TSEREVELAKIS GEORGE J.,
TSAGKARAKI MARGARITA,
ZACHARAKIS GIANNIS
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal of microscopy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.569
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1365-2818
pISSN - 0022-2720
DOI - 10.1111/jmi.12396
Subject(s) - photoacoustic imaging in biomedicine , fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy , optical imaging , fluorescence , microscopy , confocal microscopy , modality (human–computer interaction) , confocal , materials science , optics , nanotechnology , biophysics , computer science , biology , artificial intelligence , physics
Summary Pigments in vegetative tissues have been a subject of intense research during the previous decades, since they play an active role in several molecular mechanisms regarding plants’ physiology and function. Towards this direction, the imaging modality that has been extensively employed and represents the state of the art for mapping pigments’ distribution is confocal microscopy. Despite the advantage of a high spatial resolution however, confocal microscopy provides a rather limited imaging depth and requires necessarily strong fluorescence properties from the specimen under observation. To overcome such limitations, we propose a hybrid, photoacoustic and optical imaging methodology for the delineation of various vegetative pigments, such as chlorophylls, anthocyanins and betalains in different plant species. The superior sensitivity and the high contrast complementarity of the hybrid technique, render it a powerful alternative to the conventional fluorescence imaging modalities, significantly expanding the current state of the art.