Improving longitudinal resolution of Airy beams two-photon volume imaging with fluorescence lifetime imaging

The non-diffracting Airy beams have been reported to increase acquisition speed by projecting the axially significantly elongated information to a two-dimensional (2D) image. Due to the elongated focal length, an Airy volumetric image can cover information as much as stack images with multiple Gaussian images at different imaging depths, which significantly increases the volumetric imaging rate. However, the projection of three-dimensional (3D) structures on a 2D plane is usually indistinguishable, especially those that overlap along the axis. Therefore, we proposed an axially resolved volume imaging technique based on a two-photon fluorescence lifetime microscopy imaging (FLIM) by using Airy beams.