Multiphoton imaging using a quantitative CMOS camera

In this work, we compare the performance of a quantitative scientific complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (qCMOS) camera to the sCMOS camera for multiphoton imaging of tissue specimens. We find that the qCMOS achieves a signal-to-background ratio that is similar to 2x and similar to 1.6x higher than that achieved by the sCMOS for two-photon fluorescence and second-harmonic generation (SHG) imaging, respectively. The field-of-view of the qCMOS camera is noticeably larger at similar to 1.3x that of the sCMOS. We also confirm that the qCMOS can spatially resolve features as fine as 12.5 mu m in 200-mu m thick tendon tissue, at a penetration depth of 140 mu m, using SHG imaging. Our results highlight the applicability of the qCMOS for some multiphoton imaging applications.