Intensity Loss of Two-Photon Excitation Fluorescence Microscopy Images of Mouse Oocyte Chromosomes

As an optical microscope with high resolution, two-photon excitation (TPE) fluorescence microscope is widely used in noninvasive 3D optical imaging of biological samples. Compared with confocal laser scanning microscope, TPE fluorescence microscope provides a deeper detecting depth. In spite of that, the image quality of sample always declines as the detecting depth increases when a noninvasive 3D optical imaging of thicker samples is performed. Mouse oocytes with a large diameter, which play an important role in clinical and biological fields, have obvious absorption and scattering effects. In the present paper, we performed compensation for two-photon fluorescence images of mouse oocyte chromosomes. Using volume as a parameter, the attenuation degree of these chromosomes was also studied. The result of our data suggested that there exists a severe axial intensity loss in two-photon microscopic images of mouse oocytes due to the absorption and scattering effects. It is necessary to make compensation for these images of mouse oocyte chromosomes obtained from two-photon microscopic system. It will be specially needed in studying the quantitative three-dimensional information of mouse oocytes.