What is a confocal microscope used for?
The primary functions of a confocal microscope are to produce a point source of light and reject out-of-focus light, which provides the ability to image deep into tissues with high resolution, and optical sectioning for 3D reconstructions of imaged samples.
What is confocal configuration?
Similar to the widefield microscope, the confocal microscope uses fluorescence optics. Instead of illuminating the whole sample at once, laser light is focused onto a defined spot at a specific depth within the sample. Excitation and emission light pathways in a basic confocal microscope configuration.
What is immersion oil do?
Immersion oil increases the resolving power of the microscope by replacing the air gap between the immersion objective lens and cover glass with a high refractive index medium and reducing light refraction. Nikon manufactures four types of Immersion Oil for microscopy.
What is airy scan?
Airyscan is a new confocal detector scheme that allows to. efficiently collect light that would be rejected by the pinhole. in a standard confocal laser scanning microscope (Fig. 9).
How does a confocal work?
Confocal microscopy uses light from a laser through the objective of a standard light microscope to excite a specimen within a narrow plane of focus. In addition to scanning the specimen in the X and Y dimensions, confocal microscopes can control the focal plane by raising and lowering the microscope stage.
What is a pinhole in microscopy?
As all conventional light sources are usually not spot-shaped but have a significant extension, the light source is projected on a tiny aperture, the pinhole, acting as a spot-shaped source. It is this detection pinhole, which usually is referred to when we mention the “pinhole” in a confocal microscope.
Why immersion oil is used in 100x?
The 100x lens is immersed in a drop of oil placed on the slide in order to eliminate any air gaps and lossof light due to refraction (bending of the light) as the light passes from glass (slide) → air → glass (objective lens).
What is the difference between immersion oil and oil immersion?
Immersion oils are transparent oils that have specific optical and viscosity characteristics necessary for use in microscopy. Typical oils used have an index of refraction of around 1.515. An oil immersion objective is an objective lens specially designed to be used in this way.