Plug-And-Play Stimulated Raman Microscopy System for Broadband Coherent Vibrational Imaging

Stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) microscopy is an emerging tool for biomedical imaging, with applications ranging from cell-drug interaction [1], cell sorting [2] to tissue analysis [3] and histopathology [4]. Current commercial systems [5] require users to deal with integration between laser, microscope and the detection system, resulting in trade-offs and, most importantly, lack of user-friendliness, thus hindering widespread application by non-specialists. This approach has pushed the laser market towards the development of high power (>100mW, >1nJ/pulse) narrowband (<1nm) tunable sources (Optical Parametric Oscillators (OPOs) and Fiber-OPOs) which can be coupled to off-the-shelf photodiodes and lock-in amplifiers, at the cost of detecting one or maximum two frequencies at a time [5].