Balancing the photon budget for optical neurophysiology
Events
Balancing the photon budget for optical neurophysiology
26 February 2021
Eastern Time (US & Canada) (UTC -05:00)
As genetically-encoded fluorescence indicators of calcium and membrane potential evolve and improve, optical methods advance to exploit their full potential for neurophysiology research. With so many choices, the neurophysiologist needs a systematic framework for comparing and predicting the performance of indicator/imaging system combinations. Dr. Foust will present such a framework for which the key figure of merit is the signal-to-noise ratio of the time-varying fluorescence signal. In this context I will also describe our efforts to boost photon budgets for membrane potential and calcium imaging with multi-focal two-photon and light-field imaging systems.
About Our Speaker: Amanda Foust
Dr. Amanda J. Foust is a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellow and Lecturer in the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College London. She studied Neuroscience with emphasis in computation and electrical engineering (BSc) at Washington State University, and Neuroscience (MPhil, PhD) at Yale University. The aim of her research programme is to engineer bridges between cutting-edge optical technologies and neuroscientists to acquire new, ground-breaking data on how brain circuits wire, process, and store information.