DECEMBER 2, 2008--Having recently expanded its array of fluorescence imaging products with the addition of four systems, Carl Zeiss MicroImaging (Jena, Germany) notes that its family of optical sectioning microscopes is the largest on the market. The new systems are Cell Observer SD, a spinning disk microscope system for high-speed confocal imaging; LSM 700, an easy-to-use, affordable, high-performance personal confocal; LSM 7 MP, a dedicated multiphoton system offering flexibility in experimental design; and Laser TIRF 3, a reproducible and highly flexible system for total internal reflection microscopy (TIRF).
With these four additions and the recently introduced highly sensitive and flexible confocal Laser Scanning Microscope LSM 710platform, Carl Zeiss is able to offer researchers the following choice of techniques for optical sectioning:
-- Total Internal Reflection (TIRF) uses an evanescent field to generate a very thin section (100 nm) of light very close to the coverslip.
-- Widefield Deconvolution takes advantage of a measured or calculated Point Spread Function to remove out of focus light.
-- Structured Illumination projects a grid into the sample and can thereby identify and remove the out-of-focus information.
-- A Spinning Disk microscope rejects out-of-focus light by inserting a rotating disk with hundreds of circular apertures into both the excitation and emission paths. A Spinning Disk system images one complete section of the field of view at a time.
-- In a Single Point Laser Scanning system, a single spot is focused into the sample and moved very rapidly across the field of view. The returning emission is filtered through a pinhole to reject the out of focus light.
-- A Line Scanner sweeps a single line of illumination across the sample and filters the returning emission through a slit aperture to reject out-of-focus light.
-- Multi-Photon microscopes (also called 2P for Two Photon or NLO for Non Linear Optics) scan a single beam across the sample, but use a pulsed infrared laser to focus the light into the sample at a density high enough so that two or more Photons excite only those fluorophores which are in the focal plane.
Carl Zeiss's highly trained specialists are available for consultation to help interested scientists determine the best solution for their application.
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Carl Zeiss MicroImaging GmbH