Single Plain Illumination Microscope

Single plain illumination microscopy utilizes a thin sheet of light to excite biological samples such as 'cleared' brains, embryos, fruit flys etc. Clearing is a procedure by which basically all tissues can be made transparent and thereby suitable for this kind of microscopy. 'Clearing' allows to analyze hole mounts of even huge specimens like mouse brain without dissecting them. By moving the 'cleared' sample through the light sheet and taking pictures at each depth, one generates a 3D image at cellular resolution with a superb signal to noise ratio.

Ultramicroscope

This LaVision BioTec’s Ultramicroscope is built on an Olympus macroscope (MVX10) with a zoom lens (magnification from 1.26 x to 12.6x, NA 0.5, working distance 10mm). The system is equipped with an Andor sCMOS camera (2560 x 2160 pixels) and four laser lines (488nm, 514nm, 568nm, 633nm). It can use two light sheets (a right and a left one) in order to minimize disturbing illumination pattern. Whole, cleared organs can be imaged in 3D in a comparably small amount of time. Our system is usable with all commonly used clearing techniques and offers a good range from overview to cell resolution.