Multiphoton excitation characteristics of cellular fluorophores of human skin in vivo

In vivo multiphoton tomography with a wavelength-tunable femtosecond laser has been performed to investigate the autofluorescence intensity of major endogenous fluorophores of human skin in dependence on the excitation wavelength. In high-resolution multiphoton images of different skin layers, clear trends were found for fluorophores like keratin, NAD(P)H, melanin as well as for the elastin and collagen networks. The analysis of the measurements is supplemented by additional measurements of fluorescence lifetime imaging and signal-decay curves by time-correlated single-photon counting. (C) 2010 Optical Society of America