Two-photon micrsocopy is useful for reducing photo-damage and seeing deep into tissue samples. First patented in 1990 by Winfried Denk and James Strickler, it’s a technique that has been used for decades in neuroscience as a minimally invasive way to image neurons in real time. But we’ve already covered how to make one of those […]
Tag: Microscopy
A step-by-step guide to building a prism-type TIRF microscope
Total Internal Reflection Florescence (TIRF) Microscopy is a technique used to observe a very thin region of sample directly at the surface of an interface (coverslip) without obtaining background interference from the rest of the sample volume. Dalton Gibbs, Anisa Kaur, Anoja Megalathan, Kumar Sapkota, and Soma Dhakal have published a wonderful paper entitled “Build Your Own Microscope: Step-By-Step […]
Precision for $100: The OpenFlexure Microscope
The OpenFlexure Microscope is an open-source 3D-printed microscope, based off a precise flexure translation stage. If you’re making them in bulk and without the high-res parts, the per-unit price is probably below $100. If you’re just putting together one, the price will probably come to more like $200 and you’ll find yourself with a lot […]
A bicycle inner tube under a breadboard can be sufficient to isolate building vibrations
In many cases equipment is set up on vibration dampened tables. In microscopy, these optical tables, in the shape of a giant metal floating breadboard are ubiquitous, and expensive. These optical tables cost several thousand dollars from the cheapest suppliers. However, if microscopes are not mechanically isolated, oscillations attenuate the quality of images. There’s an […]
Incu-Stream: Inverted Bright-Field Microscopy and Automated Mechanical Scanning for just $184
Incu-Stream is an open-hardware microscopy setup designed for bright-field cell imaging of incubated microplates. The design is all laid out in a paper written by Güray Gürkan and Koray Gürkan, with nothing hidden in a supplementary packet this time. The system is specifically aimed at creating a microplate compatible inverted bright-field microscope system that can […]