Probing cell activity in random access modality

We combined the advantage of an ultrafast random access microscope with novel labelling technologies to study the intra- and inter-cellular action potential propagation in neurons and cardiac myocytes with sub-millisecond time resolution. The random accesses microscopy was used in combination with a new fluorinated voltage sensitive dye with improved photostability to record membrane potential from multiple Purkinje cells with near simultaneous sampling. The RAMP system rapidly scanned between lines drawn in the membranes of neurons to perform multiplex measurements of the TPF signal. This recording was achieved by rapidly positioning the laser excitation with the AOD to sample a patch of membrane from each cell in <100 μs; for recording from five cells, multiplexing permits a temporal resolution of 400 μs sufficient to capture every spike. The system is capable to record spontaneous activity over 800 ms from five neighbouring cells simultaneously, showing that spiking is not temporally correlated. The system was also used to investigate the electrical properties of tubular system (TATS) in isolated rat ventricular myocytes. © 2013 OSA-SPIE.