Label-free imaging of zebrafish larvae in vivo by photoacoustic microscopy

Zebrafish play an important role in biological and biomedical research. Traditional in vivo imaging methods for studying zebrafish larvae primarily require fluorescence labeling. In this work, relying on tissue intrinsic optical absorption contrast, we acquired high resolution label-free 3D images of zebrafish larvae by using photoacoustic microscopy (PAM) in vivo. The spatial resolution reaches several microns, allowing the study of microstructures in various living organs. We demonstrated that our method has the potential to be a powerful non-invasive imaging method for studying various small animal models, including zebrafish larvae, Caenorhabditis elegans, frogs and drosophila larvae. (C) 2012 Optical Society of America