Olympus introduces cost-effective clinical microscope

Olympus has introduced the new CX21LED clinical microscope with built-in light emitting diode (LED) illumination. Offering consistent long-term performance for biological and medical applications, this cost-effective imaging system can illuminate samples with a similar light intensity to that provided by halogen bulbs. Furthermore, the LED light source produces a more uniform, controllable and stable illumination for high-quality imaging. As an environmentally-friendly and easy-to-use system, this microscope is also ideal for educational use.

The Olympus CX21LED features an LED with an expected lifetime of over 20,000 hours, eliminating the need for frequent halogen lamp replacements. This cost-effective method of sample illumination not only consumes much less energy than halogen lamps, but also provides a comparable light intensity for excellent imaging.

Designed for long-term use, the CX21LED microscope is composed of robust components: the eyepiece and condenser are both factory attached to the body, while the revolving nosepiece is firmly fixed to the wide and rigid arm along with the objectives. In addition, the compact and lightweight (approx 6 kg) system can be safely transported from lab to lab and easily stored.

Increased usability
As well as providing uniform and stable light intensity, the brightness of the LED can be changed without affecting the colour temperature. This, in addition with the incorporation of the Olympus plan corrected UIS2 objectives ensures that clear images are obtained with a stable colour balance at any brightness level.

The ergonomic layout of the main controls (focus and fine-focusing knob, light control adjustment and stage handle) allows the user to operate the microscope quickly and easily with minimal movement. An ultra-smooth, four position revolving nosepiece ensures smooth operation and durability are obtained. This robustness is further enhanced by the abrasion-resistant rackless stage, designed for smooth and continuous movement. By effectively removing any protruding racks, the risk of damaging samples or inflicting hand injury is eliminated. Furthermore, the mechanical stage focus-lock prevents the objective from touching the slide and damaging either the specimen or the objective.

For further information contact, Esther Ahrent, e-mail: microscopy@olympus-europa.com or view website: www.microscopy.olympus.eu   Refer to next page

Advanced fluorescence microscopy - Made easy

Olympus has introduced the all-in-one FSX100 fluorescence microscope system to enable even the most inexperienced users to create high-end research images. The FSX100 microscope is designed to remove all of the complex steps involved in setting-up and using multi-channel fluorescence microscopes, ensuring that users can concentrate on the images and data without any prior microscopy expertise.

By coupling high quality microscopy and imaging components with precision automation and advanced software, the Olympus FSX100 presents simplified workflows so that users can obtain high quality images and image series by simply: loading their sample; defining their observation mode and regions of interest (ROI); and then capturing their images: as straight-forward as Set-Select-Capture.

The advanced UIS2 optics used in the FSX100 include an SAPO 40x (NA 0.95) objective and 0.4x-2.0x optical zoom, providing an overall magnification range of 17x-80x. The three pre-installed fluorescence filter cubes - ultraviolet (360-370 nm), blue (460-495 nm) and green (530-550 nm) - cover a broad range of dyes with fluorescence illumination provided by an easy to fit, pre-centred metal-halide burner with a 2,000 hour lifespan. A highly stable LED illumination system is used to provide consistent brightfield and phase contrast illumination with a 16,000 hour lifespan.

All components are motorised and controlled via the interactive software, ensuring that functions such as focusing, exposure, fluorescence wavelength selection and even cover slip thickness correction are automated. As a result the user does not have to touch the microscope at all and can perform advanced imaging processes such as time-lapses, Z-stacks and multi-image alignments with ease. Due the compact and self-contained design of the FSX100, it can be placed on the bench at the point of discovery, or easily transported to wherever it is needed, making microscopy very flexible. Furthermore, the stage is completely enclosed and therefore provides full darkroom facilities, ensuring maximum imaging sensitivity.

The highly intuitive software guides users through the whole imaging process. An overview image of the sample is generated automatically once the slide or cell culture dish is placed on the stage and the user has clicked 'start'. From here, regions of interest are selected and the microscope zooms in, optimising the image and presenting the user with a series of intuitive tools for imaging the sample. At this stage the user can capture the automatically optimised images or manually adjust settings such as the focus and exposure time, magnification, stage position and even change the observation method. On capturing images, the associated data and meta-data are stored in a highly logical image library. As a result, settings from existing images can be reapplied to the instrument for imaging new samples, ensuring excellent experimental consistency.

User-friendly confocal brings advanced imaging to a broader audience

All components of the FV10i are motorised and controlled via software, ensuring that functions such as focusing, exposure, fluorescence wavelength selection and even cover slip thickness correction are automated so the user does not have to touch the microscope at all. As a result, advanced imaging processes including time-lapses, Z-stacks and multi-position image capture can be carried out with ease and even combined to provide true multi-dimensional imaging. The entire system is self-contained, providing full darkroom capabilities, ensuring that the FV10i can be placed on the bench at the point of discovery, or easily transported to wherever it is needed.

The Olympus FV10i confocal laser scanning microscope is available in oil-and water-immersion models, both providing an overall magnification range of 10x-600x by combining the 10x and 60x UIS2 SAPO objectives with the confocal optical zoom. The four diode lasers (405, 473, 559 & 635 nm) are housed in a combiner unit and provide the flexibility to cover the majority of fluorescent dyes. 

On the detection side the FV10i is fitted with a newly developed spectral system featuring two fluorescence channels supplied by a novel grating, beam splitter and slit arrangement. In addition to this, each channel is fitted with a variable barrier filter which is set automatically to match the wavelength range for each fluorescence dye in use. The system can acquire two fluorescence channels and a phase contrast channel simultaneously via a line sequence mode, or up to four fluorescence channels and a phase contrast channel using a frame sequence mode, ensuring that multiple fluorescence dyes can be imaged easily.

The water immersion model is fitted with an automated water supply and correction collar for ensuring that the 60x objective is always used correctly. It also features an integrated incubator with CO2, temperature and humidity control, enabling long-term live cell imaging.

Pushing the boundaries of fluorescence imaging

Olympus has introduced a new, highly versatile, range of cutting-edge research microscope systems. The Olympus xcellence line covers advanced live cell techniques such as real-time high-speed imaging, TIRFM & HILO (cell^TIRF), photo control such as FRAP, FLIP & photo activation (cell^FRAP), and laser spinning disc confocal (cell^SPIN). More importantly, the Olympus xcellence range takes these techniques to the extreme via a complete series of new and innovative features that ensure researchers can continue breaking new ground in science.

Olympus xcellence
The Olympus xcellence live cell imaging system range is designed to bring the most advanced fluorescent imaging techniques within easier reach, whilst pushing the very boundaries of optical imaging. The Unix-based controller provides the high-speed parallel component management required to ensure that each procedure can capture the most advanced data. The xcellence software includes the Experiment Manager, a universal planning and execution tool with logic and simple drag-and-drop experiment construction. Olympus xcellence provides the ultimate system for imaging live cells over prolonged periods of time with the Olympus MT20 fluorescence lightsource providing highly stabilised mercury or mercury-xenon burner control with very fast filter, attenuator and shutter changes. The new xcellence software also offers Olympus Data Bus (ODB) enhanced controls for a broader spectrum of hardware including laser linking, for fast switching and precise control of laser lines. Furthermore, the system now incorporates multiple high speed (µsec) bidirectional TTL communication ports, greatly expanding the hardware integration capacity.

cell^TIRF The new total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy module, cell^TIRF, features 4 laser lines with separate motorised angle control enabling synchronised acquisition with identical penetration depth. The xcellence software enables the user to set incident angles or penetration depths with ease, as well as running experiments with varying penetration depths. This, combined with the broadest selection of TIRFM objectives, provides a new level of precision in multi-colour TIRFM. The optics knowledge of Olympus has also enabled the cell^TIRF to be used for highly inclined and laminated optical (HILO) sheet imaging, as well as the seamless integration with epi-fluorescence, FRAP and laser spinning disk techniques.

cell^FRAP The cell^FRAP system offers the state-of-the-art in photo control technology, enabling advanced FRAP, iFRAP, FLIP, FLAP, photoactivation and photoconversion. Optically, the FRAP module can incorporate two separate laser lines or a laser combiner and is introduced into the microscope via a separate light-path to the camera and fluorescence illumination. This ensures full integration of FRAP with epi-fluorescence, TIRFM and laser spinning disk techniques, and enables simultaneous imaging and photo-manipulation as well as µsec switching. Fully controlled via the software, basic FRAP techniques can be completed at the click of button, and more advanced techniques can be fully controlled with great ease. Furthermore, the pattern bleaching mode enables a simulation of fluorescence speckle microscopy (FSM), and the 'fire on click' feature enables manual triggering of the FRAP laser using the mouse.

cell^SPIN The Olympus cell^SPIN has been developed as a bright laser spinning disk confocal system with the highest emission efficiency on the market. This is achieved by using high power lasers with fine control over the field of illumination and new laser combiner technology with dramatically enhanced coupling efficiency, ensuring that as much light as possible illuminates the sample. What is more, as well as using optimised disks for perfect confocality with different objectives, the system has full control over the disk speed and offers a maximum speed of 5600 rpm. As a result the Olympus cell^SPIN can provide up to 367 confocal images per second.

For further information contact, Esther Ahrent, e-mail: microscopy@olympus-europa.com or view website: www.microscopy.olympus.eu   Refer to next page