Multidimensional Fluorescence Imaging Applied to Biological Tissue

Following the considerable impact of the application of convenient ultrafast lasers to multiphoton microscopy on biomedical imaging, it seems to us that FLIM and MDFI continue the trend in which advances in instrumentation will facilitate new discoveries — and modes of discovery — in biology and medicine. We hope we have shown the reader that fluorescence lifetime can provide intrinsic molecular contrast in unstained tissue and that the prospects for in vivo application are exciting. We believe that the capability to excite fluorophores at almost any excitation wavelength and the opportunities to extract more information from fluorescence signals by resolving with respect to lifetime, excitation and emission spectrum and also polarisation, will have a major impact on the ability to identify and exploit intrinsic contrast and on investigations of molecular biology. There the combination of new fluorescence probe technology, including genetically-expressed labels and nano-engineered devices, with new modes of interrogation and analysis, will continue to fuel the astounding advances in this field. There is a real prospect that our ability to ask and test biological questions will cease to be limited by the availability of suitable instrumentation. Rather it is likely to be limited by our ability to analyse and comprehend the (rapidly increasing volume of) data that we collect.