Swept-wavelength null polarimeter for high-speed weak anisotropy measurements.

Null-polarimeters provide the best sensitivity to anisotropy measurements and so far have been developed for the detection of small optical activities. This paper revisits null polarimetry through an original configuration based on the concept of spectrally encoded light polarization, in order to measure, with unprecedented speed, either linear or circular retardance with the same degree of sensitivity . Using passive polarization optics and a high speed wavelength swept laser source, the achieved single-pass sensitivity was 55nrad/Hz and 45nrad/Hz for respectively linear and circular retardance considering a minimum acquisition time of 10 µs. Due to its compactness and rapidity, the method could be further implemented in laser scanning microscopes, which should be of great interest for revealing very low anisotropies in biological tissues.

Gastric cancer multicellular spheroid analysis by two-photon microscopy.

Gastric cancer (GC) is highly deadly. Three-dimensional (3D) cancer cell cultures, known as spheroids, better mimic tumor microenvironment (TME) than standard 2D cultures. Cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAF), a major cellular component of TME, promote or restrain cancer cell proliferation, invasion and resistance to drugs. We established spheroids from two human GC cell lines mixed with human primary CAF. Spheroid organization, analyzed by two-photon microscopy, showed CAF in AGS/CAF spheroids clustered in the center, but dispersed throughout in HGT-1/CAF spheroids. Such differences may reflect clonal specificities of GC cell lines and point to the fact that GC should be considered as a highly personalized disease.

Linear diattenuation imaging of biological tissues with near infrared Mueller scanning microscopy.

Among the multitude of optical polarization contrasts that can be observed in complex biological specimens, linear diattenuation (LD) imaging has received little attention. It is indeed challenging to image LD with basic polarizing microscopes because it is often relatively small in comparison with linear retardance (LR). In addition, interpretation of LD images is not straightforward when experiments are conducted in the visible range because LD can be produced by both dichroism and anisotropic scattering. Mueller polarimetry is a powerful implementation of polarization sensing able to differentiate and measure the anisotropies of specimens. In this article, near infrared transmission Mueller scanning microscopy is used to image LD in thin biological specimen sections made of various proteins with unprecedented resolution and sensitivity. The near infrared spectral range makes it possible to lower the contribution of dichroism to the total linear diattenuation in order to highlight anisotropic scattering. Pixel-by-pixel comparison of LD images with LR and multiphoton images demonstrates that LD is produced by under-resolved structures that are not revealed by other means, notably within the sarcomere of skeletal muscles. LD microscopy appears as a powerful tool to provide new insights into the macro-molecular organization of biological specimens at the sub-microscopic scale without labelling.

Optimization of fast spectrally encoded Mueller polarimeters for real-time monitoring.

In this paper, we report a generalized theoretical framework on spectrally encoded polarimeters to display in real time both linear and circular retardance as well as linear and circular diattenuation on the basis of a recent experimental work detailed in Sci. Rep.9, 3972 (2019)SRCEC32045-232210.1038/s41598-019-40467-z. The considered polarimeters use a broadband light source and wavelength-dependent retarders whose thicknesses are selected to guarantee minimal noise propagation and reduced data processing for real-time display of pure polarimetric effects.

Action cross sections of two-photon excited luminescence of some Eu(III) and Tb(III) complexes.

Four different luminescent lanthanide complexes have been studied with respect to multiphoton excitation using near-infrared femtosecond pulses. The method for measuring action cross sections of two-photon excited fluorescence in solution relative to a known standard is reviewed. Two refractive index-related corrections are necessary in this method: one for the multiphoton excitation process, the other for the collection of the emitted light. It has been found that (2,4,6-trimethoxyphenyl)dipicolinic acid and Michler's ketone are reasonable sensitisers of two-photon excited lanthanide luminescence in solution, whereas dipicolinic acid and carbostyril-124 do not give rise to any detectable two-photon excited lanthanide luminescence using modest excitation powers (<20 mW focused at the sample) in the 700-1000 nm range.