Nikon Instruments and JEOL form strategic partnership tying together light and electron microscopy
Nikon Instruments (Melville, NY) and JEOL (Tokyo, Japan) have partnered to research and develop ways to correlate data from two very different types of microscopy: light and electron microscopy.
A Nikon high-contrast light microscope is intended for imaging biological assays. Nikon and JEOL will work to correlate data from their microscopes (light and electron respectively).
Nikon Instruments (Melville, NY) and JEOL (Tokyo, Japan) have partnered to research and develop ways to correlate data from two very different types of microscopy: light and electron microscopy.
Overcoming resolution limits imposed by the diffraction limit of light has been a major breakthrough in the field of light microscopy, as evidenced by the recent 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded to the field of superresolution microscopy. With the development of superresolution technologies there has been growing interest in the research community to correlate light-microscopy data with electron-microscopy data to further push the limits of resolution.
Despite the breakthroughs in resolution limit, light microscopes cannot provide the molecular-level information that an electron microscope can. Conversely, electron microscopes are traditionally restricted to fixed (nonliving) samples; a limitation that is not present in light microscopy. Light microscopes also have the advantage of enabling selective visualization of structures resulting in an extremely high level of molecular specificity. The Nikon-JEOL alliance will research and develop tools that combine the advantages that each technology provides.
John Wallace was with Laser Focus World for nearly 25 years, retiring in late June 2022. He obtained a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and physics at Rutgers University and a master's in optical engineering at the University of Rochester. Before becoming an editor, John worked as an engineer at RCA, Exxon, Eastman Kodak, and GCA Corporation.
