Category: Imaging
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Acquisition Speed Comparison of MetaMorph, NIS Elements, Micro-Manager
How fast can a typical imaging system really run? What factors affect this? While most research might not require rapid sequential capture, almost all experiments can benefiet from tight exposure/illumination timing, yet few microscope users are aware of timing delays injected into experiments by the control software they are using. So how much delay is […]
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Echo Laboratories launches the Revolve Microscope
Over 450 years have seen the compound microscope evolve into an incredible instrument. From simple contrast viewing, we’ve moved to super resolution systems capable of sub-diffraction accuracy. But for all this advancement, we’ve been stuck with the architecture of the microscope platform. Over 70% of labs end up buying both inverted and upright microscopes….until today! I’m happy to introduce the […]
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Countdown to a Revolution in Microscopy – Day 1
Well, I guess I should continue providing lengthy explanations of this skunk works project, but I think it’s time to let this thing stand on it’s own merit. So…here’s a nifty countdown timer until the announcement goes up! The wait is over – the Revolve is Here!!
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Countdown to a Revolution in Microscopy – Day 3
Every so often I will get the chance to cook up some code for one of the usual software scope control packages. But these days, I spend most of my time in programs like Fusion360, Fritzing, and the like. So I guess this is how I feel when using the typical scope control software. How […]
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Countdown to a Revolution in Microscopy – Day 4
What can’t your microscope do? Any user of a modern scope, or at least, a high end scope, considers the addition of new widgets. Whether it’s a better illuminator, adding a more sensitive camera, or even a motorized component, we think of scope upgrades,as…well…UP grades, yes? But in so many other areas of our lives, […]
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Countdown to a Revolution in Microscopy – Day 5
The foundational design of the compound microscope has, in many ways, remained locked in place for the 450 years of it’s existence. Combining an objective, eyepiece, and illuminator to provide a magnified view of a specimen has drastically improved. The illumination, staging, detection, optical design, and contrast methods have all evolved by leaps and bounds […]
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Nikon nSIM wins #5 in TheScientist’s 2011 Best and Brightest
Here’s a short video review of the top 10 innovations in 2011. Some really cool technology here! Top 10 Innovations of 2011 from thescientistllc on Vimeo.
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ImageJ Counting Macro for Known Field Values
Here’s a simple method to deal with varying intensities in a large run of images, assuming you have a known number of cells in a field. If I assume I should see, say, more than X cells per area, I can adjust my threshold to slowly increase it’s aggressiveness until that minimum counted value is […]
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How TIRF works on a Microscope
TIRF is a widely used tool for effectively creating a super resolution instrument out of a standard widefield microscope. The cool part of TIRF is that it bypasses the limits of axial resolution on the scope not by altering the optics per-se, but by altering what gets excited. In a normal widefield fluorescent microscope, photons […]
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Neo camera at 100fps
Andor’s Neo camera has been out for about a year now. I first wrote about using it back in February. The camera immediately showed the major difference in field of view between sCmos sensors and traditional interlines quite well, but the speed, binning, sub-array and bias clamp controls weren’t available. Over the past few firmware/SDK […]