The human model ex-vivo multiphoton database is an imaging dataset, produced within the activities of the PICCOLO project, consisting of a set of co-registered Haematoxylin-Eosin (H&E) and multiphoton microscopy (MPM) images acquired from thin colon tissue sections prepared at the Basurto University Hospital (Bilbao).

MPM images were acquired from paraffin-embedded blank tissue slices using a custom-made two-photon laser scanning microscopy setup, located at the European Laboratory for Non-linear Spectroscopy (LENS, Florence) using two different contrast mechanisms: two-photon fluorescence (TPF) and second-harmonic generation (SHG) microscopy. The same specimens were then H&E labelled and imaged in order to obtain a perfect co-registration of MPM and H&E images.

The whole dataset contains a total of 50 samples of colon lesions, of which 24 are malignant neoplasias (adenocarcinomas), 19 are preneoplastic lesions (adenomas), 2 are hyperplasias and 5 are healthy colon tissues.