Deformable mirror-based axial scanning for two-photon mammalian brain imaging.

To expand our understanding of the roles of astrocytes in neural circuits, there is a need to develop optical tools tailored specifically to capture their complex spatiotemporal dynamics. This interest is not limited to 2D, but to multiple depths. The focus of our work was to design and evaluate the optical performance of an enhanced version of a two-photon (2P) microscope with the addition of a deformable mirror (DM)-based axial scanning system for live mammalian brain imaging.