Single-shot multi-color fluorescence microscopy via a colorimetry camera

Multi-color fluorescence microscopy presents highly detailed biological samples interactively. However, current multi-color methods suffer from an intricate optical setup, complicated image analysis, or a long acquisition time. To address these issues, here we develop a simple multi-color method based on a customized colorimetry camera to enable the detection of multiple structures from single-shot acquisition. The unfiltered channel (W pixels) and color channels (R, G, B, and NIR pixels) in this customized camera simultaneously provide a broad detection wavelength range and high detection sensitivity. We built a simple optical setup by replacing the monochrome camera in a basic fluorescence microscopy system with a colorimetry camera, and developed effective image analysis procedures to reconstruct a multi-color image from a single frame of a raw image. We demonstrated single-shot four-color wide-field fluorescence imaging on fixed cos-7 cells with < 5% cross talk, which is comparable to the best reported values. Our method greatly simplifies both the optical system and image analysis in the widely used method of multi-color fluorescence microscopy, thus offering an effective and easy way to study multiple objects at the same time.