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Research

Microscopy Innovation Lab Technology

 
The Microscopy Innovation Lab highly engineers its instrumentation to address specific biological questions at the cutting-edge of performance.  Nevertheless, each microscopy technique comes with specific advantages and disadvantages, and tradeoffs must be considered when performing advanced microscopy.  These include lateral and axial resolution, time-resolution, imaging speed, imaging depth, sensitivity, gentle long-term imaging, labeling technologies, computational post-processing, and compatibility with existing computer vision analysis packages.  By consulting with the Microscopy Innovation Lab, we can optimize this complex parameter space to deliver unparalleled biological insight.
  • Cleared Tissue Axially Swept Light-Sheet Microscope (ctASLM) for single-cell biology throughout millimeters of tissues. Capable of imaging in any clearing solvent (PEGASOS, BABB, CLARITY, etc.), and roughly 40x faster imaging than a confocal.  Two versions exist:
    • High-NA - Isotropic resolution of ~350 nm in BABB and ~450 nm in water. Field of view of 328 microns in water, and 270 microns in BABB.  488/560/640 nm illumination sources.
    • Medium-NA – Isotropic resolution of ~700 nm. Field of view 870 microns.  405/488/560/640 nm illumination sources.
  • Oblique Plane Microscope (OPM). Designed for imaging on optical glass substrates High-speed (~400 frames per second) light-sheet microscope with ~270 and ~650 nm lateral and axial resolution, respectively. 488/560 nm illumination sources.
  • Spectral Imaging System. Anticipated 8 color live-cell imaging in total internal reflection and epi-fluorescence geometries via spectral unmixing. Under development.
  • 2 & 3-photon laser scanning microscope with adaptive optics. Anticipated intravital imaging at depths beyond 1 mm. Under development.
  • Additional live-cell light-sheet microscopy equipment is available on a limited basis, including a high-resolution Axially Swept Light-Sheet Microscope, the Micro-Environmental Selective Plane Illumination Microscope, Field Synthesis (e.g., Lattice Light-Sheet Microscopy), and a Multi-View Light-Sheet Microscope optimized for imaging developing embryos and zebrafish.

Additionally, the Microscopy Innovation Lab has a high-performance computer for data visualization and and processing, equipped with 1.048 TB of RAM, 28 CPU cores, and a nVidia Quadro GPU with 24 GB of on-board memory. Software on this computer includes Amira, Arivisl, Imaris, Fiji, and more.