Dynamic aberration correction for multiharmonic microscopy

We demonstrate image-based aberration correction in a third-harmonic generation (THG) microscope. We describe a robust, mostly sample-independent correction scheme relying on prior measurement of the influence of aberration modes produced by a deformable mirror on the quality of THG images. We find that using image sharpness as an image quality metric, correction of N aberration modes is achieved using 2 (2N+1) measurements in a variety of samples. We also report aberration correction in combined multiharmonic and two-photon excited fluorescence experiments. Finally, we demonstrate time-dependent adaptive THG imaging in developing embryonic tissue. (C) 2009 Optical Society of America