December 8, 2004, Melville, NY--Nikon Instruments has announced a Digital Eclipse C1si confocal laser fluorescence microscope system that can simultaneously acquire the fluorescence spectrum over a 320-nm wavelength range in at 10nm spectral resolution or over smaller ranges at 5-nm or 2.5-nm spectral resolution.
It can be difficult to cleanly separate the signal from multiple fluorescent probes with conventional confocal microscopes because of the overlap of their fluorescence emission spectra. Artifacts due to spillover can be especially troublesome in fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) microscopy where precise localization of the source of the signal is required.
The new Nikon system solves these problems by acquiring the fluorescence spectrum at a high resolution, mathematically separating the signals from each probe, and assigning it to a discrete data channel free from confounding spillover. The result is a "stack" of images of the same object or scene, each at a different spectral narrow band or color.
"The use of multiple fluorescent labels has long been commonplace in the study of fixed specimens, and is now becoming established for in vivo studies," said Stan Schwartz, marketing vice president, Nikon Instruments. "The Digital Eclipse C1si eliminates expensive and cumbersome custom filter sets and provides a time efficient, and cost effective, approach for acquiring optimum wavelength coverage."