1. Faculty of Biological Sciences
  2. Facilities
  3. Bio-imaging equipment

Bio-imaging equipment

Airyscan

Airyscan provides in a 1.7x increase in resolution compared to conventional confocal microscopy. The confocal microscope utilises a pinhole to reject out of focus emission light, giving a sharper image but losing light making it dimmer and less sensitive. The Airyscan solves this trade-off between resolution and light efficiency by imaging on a 32-detector array, each of which acts like a small pinhole. All the light is collected and the signals from each individual detector is then reassigned to their correct position. This produces images with better signal to noise as well as increased resolution. Deconvolution algorithms can then be applied to further improve the resolution. As it is based on confocal technology the Airyscan works well with standard samples and dyes that can be used on the confocal microscope.  

Capabilities

  • Fully automated microscope.
  • Improved resolution in x, y and z, higher sensitivity and increased speed
  • Spectral imaging and linear un-mixing capabilities to allow the differentiation of similar fluorescence dyes or fluorescence signals from auto-fluorescence.
  • Sensitive GaAsp detectors allow you to use less laser power, performing gentle imaging of your samples
  • Motorised stage for screening plates and slides, tile scanning and point visiting
  • Temperature and CO2 regulation for live cell imaging with heated stage and fully integrated incubator box
  • FRAP and FRET imaging including
  • 1.7x higher resolution in all three dimensions with Fast Airyscan, compared to conventional confocal microscopy

Microscope

  • Both of our LSM880 upright and inverted confocal microscopes have the additional Airyscan detector for super-resolution imaging. 

Lasers

  • Diode 405 nm
  • Argon 458, 488, 514 nm
  • DPSS 561 nm
  • HeNe 633 nm

Objectives

  • EC Plan-Neofluor 10x/0.30
  • Plan-Apochromat 20x/0.8
  • Plan-Apochromat 40x/1.4 Oil DIC
  • Plan-Apochromat 63x/1.4 Oil DIC

PMTs and Emission Filters

  • 2 PMTs plus additional GaAsp detector with fully 'tunable' emmision collection
  • Fast Airyscan module for 1.7x increased resolution with the following emission STOPfilters:
    • BP420-480 + BP495-550
    • BP420-480 + BP495-620
    • BP420-480 + LP605
    • BP465-505 + LP525
    • BP495-550 + LP570
    • BP570-620 + LP645

Location

  • Faculty of Biological Sciences, L.C.Miall 5.08