Multimodal nonlinear optical microscope for material and life sciences

We report the development of a new multimodal nonlinear microscopy platform for material and life sciences. The laser scanning microscope is capable of hyperspectral imaging by coherent Raman scattering using either spectral focusing technique or femtosecond laser pulses. Other nonlinear optical signals and normal confocal fluorescence can also be detected. It is a highly adaptable fully motorised system with specific calibration procedures and equipped with a simple graphical user interface for experiment control and data analysis. We report a description and characterisation of the instrument along with an application example of a pharmaceutical tablet image. The results underline the current state-of-the-art for such an instrument. Published by Optica Publishing Group under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.