Scanimage 2017 : Photostimulation Timing Mechanism

For our current purposes, we need a timing mechanism to be able to control the PMT shutters (to protect the PMTs from the blue laser light)

and to record the frame at which the photostimulation occurred while imaging.

Do the "external triggers" feature in ScanImage 5.1 allow the synchronization of the imaging with the on/off pulses of the photostimulation laser?

Your strategy should work just fine. Did you check out this webpage Auxiliary Trigger?

You will have to purchase another type of NI breakout box if you want to record time stamps to the Tiff file as you can see from the above page.

You will have to write a custom script that does something like: detects your "stimulate now trigger", shuts imaging laser shutter, closes the shutter to the PMT, turns on the blue laser, turns off the bule laser, and reopens the closed shutters.

If the PMT shutter is configured in the ScanImage MDF, all you need to do is something like this (Matlab):

hSI.hShutters.shuttersTransition(1,false);
% deliver stimulus
hSI.hShutters.shuttersTransition(1,true);

These commands shut (false) and open (true) the shutters.