Seminario CBM 30th March h 3pm - Prof. Tony Wilson

[Maria Teresa]

Gentili Signori,
si segnala il seguente seminario, di cui si allega la locandina,  
promosso da CBM - Centro di Biomedicina Molecolare, con invito a  
partecipare e preghiera di cortese diffusione.

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Making light work in microscopy

prof. Tony Wilson

Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, UK

Moderator: dr. Silke Krol, CBM



Friday, 30th March 2007, 3 pm

Conference Hall Auditorium T Building
AREA Science Park
Basovizza
Trieste



The confocal microscope is now an instrument in widespread use in  
laboratories around the world.  It is probably fair to say that its  
popularity and importance is due to its unique optical sectioning or  
depth discrimination property, which gives rise to the instrument’s  
unique volume imaging capability.  The key elements of a traditional  
confocal microscope system are a laser light source (required since  
standard microscope illuminators are insufficiently bright), a  
pinhole point detector together with an appropriate scanning  
mechanism. It could be argued, in some cases, that the traditional  
approach has some drawbacks, for example, the use of laser  
illumination may be thought to be undesirable (limited wavelengths,  
expense etc.) as may the lack of real-time image acquisition.  In  
order to overcome these limitations and produce light-efficient real- 
time confocal instruments we have developed a new approach in which  
we retain the confocal principle of using pinholes to prevent out-of- 
focus light from contributing to the image and use aperture  
correlation techniques to eliminate cross-talk between closely packed  
parallel confocal systems.



A common requirement in confocal and many other kinds of microscopy  
is to obtain a series of high- resolution, through-focus images. An  
approach often adopted is to move the specimen  axially so that  
different planes are brought into focus. A practical drawback to this  
approach is that mechanical movement is inevitably slow and, in some  
applications, may be impractical, for example when the scanning  
movements affect the specimen. An optical method of refocusing is  
clearly preferable as this permits imaging to be carried out without  
disturbing the specimen. Furthermore, such an approach could enable  
higher axial scan rates than were previously possible. In the  
simplest case, optical refocusing can be performed by repositioning  
the detector. However, when used in conjunction with high numerical  
aperture (NA) objectives, this method produces spherically aberrated  
images.  In order to overcome this difficulty we will present a new  
fast focusing method whereby refocusing is performed by a different  
means using a second high NA lens and mirror.  As a result perfect,  
aberration free images of all planes in the specimen can be acquired  
by scanning the reference mirror. In addition to this, we will also  
present results from a number of different confocal systems that have  
been built to exploit this principle of operation.


For information: CBM  tel. 040 375 7711 - info at cbm.fvg.it






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