Confocal Microscopy
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Find the Needle in the Haystack
The obvious has been explored. These days, biologists strive to identify and analyze hidden and rare events. The task is tackled by automatically screening large numbers of objects – typically growing…Read article
Pinhole Controls Optical Slicing
True confocal scanning microscopes (TCS) use a variable detection pinhole. Good optical sectioning tries to use just the inner core of the PSF.Read article
Confocal Optical Section Thickness
Confocal microscopes are employed to optically slice comparably thick samples.Read article
Confocal Microscopy - Optical Path
“Confocal Microscopy” refers to a particular optical microscope that allows recording optical sections. Optical sectioning is achieved in a confocal system by illuminating and observing a single…Read article
Choose Your Excitation Wavelength
Although time correlated single photon counting (TCSPC) is the method of choice for fluorescence lifetime quantification, it requires dedicated instrumentation including a pulsed laser source, a…Read article
CARS and Confocal
The most important drawback of single-photon and multiphoton confocal microscopy is the need to label the specimen. CARS (Coherent Anti-Stokes Raman Spectroscopy) addresses this issue because it is…Read article
Exploring the Concert of Neuronal Activities
Brain research using Confocal and Multiphoton Microscopy. Using imaging techniques such as confocal and two-photon microscopy, neuronal dendritic arborization of neurons and their synaptic…Read article
Deep Tissue Imaging
Developmental biology using Multiphoton microscopy with OPO. To gain new insight into the fundamental control of cell response to physical changes and to study the dynamics and roles of biological…Read article
Restless Receptors
Synapses are the switch-points in our brain for information transmission, learning and memory. News studies and developments of imaging techniques have provided new insights into the dynamics of…Read article
The Missing Link to the Nanocosm of Life
Fully understanding the functionality and complexity of the human central nervous system remains one of the major open questions in modern science. Stimulated emission depletion microscopy (STED) can…Read article
Stem Cell Biology in Cancer Research
The comprehension of stem cell biology and its molecular basis is now acquiring paramount importance in cancer research. The need to look at a single, possibly living, cell makes fluorescence…Read article
Confocal Nanoscopy Goes Multicolor
Scientists strive to understand the architecture of life. They want to learn how biological structures are arranged in respect to one another. Multicolor superresolution imaging allows fundamental…Read article
The First Supercontinuum Confocal that Adapts to the Sample
Until now, biological and medical research fluorescence imaging in multi-user facilities or institutes has been limited by the type or number of dyes that could be excited. The Leica TCS SP5 X…Read article
Obese and Slim Yeast Cells
Lipids are on everyone’s lips nowadays, whether ω-3/6 fatty acids, good and bad cholesterol or just plain fat that has the annoying habit of accumulating on our hips. Serious diseases such as obesity,…Read article
From Molecules to Tissues
Cancer research using confocal and multiphoton microscopy. Sequencing of the human genome stimulated a radical change in the approach to biomedical research. The comprehension of the mechanisms…Read article
Characterization of Photosynthetic Biofilms from Roman Catacombs via 3D Imaging and Subcellular Identification of Pigments
Artificial illumination can harm hypogean monuments by inducing the uncontrolled growth of photosynthetic biofilms (green sickness or maladie verte). With the aim of preventing biodeterioration or…Read article
In the Footsteps of Linnaeus – Microscopic Imaging in Marine Biodiversity Research
For the study of minute marine organisms such as free swimming larvae or bottom dwelling invertebrates it is a great advantage to have modern microscopic equipment in close proximity to the natural…Read article
4D Photoactivation of pa-GFP in Living Cells Using Two-Photon Excitation Laser Scanning Microscopy
We report about two-photon activation of a photoactivatable derivative of the Aequorea Victoria green fluorescent protein (pa-GFP). This special form of the molecule increases its fluorescence…Read article