Sensor less adaptive optics and the effect of field of view in biological second harmonic generation microscopy

In light of the population aging in many developed countries, there is a great economical interest in improving the speed and cost-efficiency of healthcare. Clinical diagnosis tools are key to these improvements, with biophotonics providing a means to achieve them. Standard optical microscopy of in vitro biological samples has been an important diagnosis tool since the invention of the microscope, with well known resolution limits. Nonlinear optical imaging improves on the resolution limits of linear microscopy, while providing higher contrast images and a greater penetration depth due to the red-shifted incident light compared to standard optical microscopy. It also provides information on molecular orientation and chirality. Adaptive optics can improve the quality of nonlinear optical images. We analyzed the effect of sensorless adaptive optics on the quality of the nonlinear optical images of biological samples. We demonstrate that care needs to be taken when using a large field of view. Our findings provide information on how to improve the quality of nonlinear optical imaging, and can be generalized to other in vitro biological samples. The image quality improvements achieved by adaptive optics should help speed up clinical diagnostics in vitro, while increasing their accuracy and helping decrease detection limits. The same principles apply to in vivo biological samples, and in the future it may be possible to extend these findings to other nonlinear optical effects used in biological imaging.