Drug quantification in turbid media by fluorescence imaging combined with light-absorption correction using white Monte Carlo simulations.

Accurate quantification of photosensitizers is in many cases a critical issue in photodynamic therapy. As a noninvasive and sensitive tool, fluorescence imaging has attracted particular interest for quantification in pre-clinical research. However, due to the absorption of excitation and emission light by turbid media, such as biological tissue, the detected fluorescence signal does not have a simple and unique dependence on the fluorophore concentration for different tissues, but depends in a complex way on other parameters as well. For this reason, little has been done on drug quantification in vivo by the fluorescence imaging technique. In this paper we present a novel approach to compensate for the light absorption in homogeneous turbid media both for the excitation and emission light, utilizing time-resolved fluorescence white Monte Carlo simulations combined with the Beer-Lambert law. This method shows that the corrected fluorescence intensity is almost proportional to the absolute fluorophore concentration. The results on controllable tissue phantoms and murine tissues are presented and show good correlations between the evaluated fluorescence intensities after the light-absorption correction and absolute fluorophore concentrations. These results suggest that the technique potentially provides the means to quantify the fluorophore concentration from fluorescence images.

Experimental investigation of relative timing jitter in passively synchronized Q-switched lasers.

Relative timing jitter between synchronized Q-switched lasers, or lack thereof, is important for stable sum-frequency generation. Experimental investigation of two passively synchronized lasers shows that the jitter is minimized when the free-running repetition rates of the two lasers are close to, but not exactly, matching. When the free-running repetition rates are matched, the jitter is significantly large. At the best operating point, the pulse-to-pulse period was 200 µs, while the relative jitter between the two lasers was 9 ns. If the effect of the master laser's pulse-to-pulse jitter is removed, the residual timing jitter between the two lasers was 6 ns, which corresponds to the lower limit set by pump power fluctuations and noise from spontaneous emission.

All passive synchronized Q-switching of a quasi-three-level and a four-level Nd:YAG laser.

Using an all passive approach, synchronized Q-switching of two Nd:YAG lasers, at 946 nm and 1064 nm, is reported. Two laser crystals are used to avoid gain competition, and stable operation is reported for the first time. The pulse trains are synchronized over a wide range of pump powers and a relative timing jitter of 36 ns is achieved. A minimum delay of 64 ns is observed between the two laser pulses, and by making the 946 nm pulse relatively long, a 79% temporal overlap is obtained when compared to the zero-delay scenario.