Have you ever wondered how superresolution microscopy works? What’s the difference between STED, STORM, and MINFLUX? What is “resolution” and what is a “PSF”? What is so special about the STEDYCON? Read on to find out.
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For over a century, we stood at the edge of microscope resolution and cursed the inexorable blur of diffracted light. Instruments improved, but the fog never lifted. Then, one man stopped trying to control how light behaves. Armed with a donut-shaped laser beam, he instead commanded where it shines and untethered resolution forever. Details >
PALM and STORM are often used as synonyms, and in fact they have a lot in common. But there are slight differences that can be important for your application. And then there are other superresolution techniques, too – like STED and MINFLUX. Details >
The elctron microscope achieves the highest magnification and resolution. But does "highest" always equal "best"? Well, that depends on what you want to do with the resolution. Details >
Confocal microscopy offers superior optical sectioning. But what is that exactly? And what about other ways to get rid of the background, such as array-based detectors like the MATRIX? Details >
Today’s research microscopes are increasingly powerful, modular, and combinatorial. There’s a lot of options out there. While the price is unquestionably a deal-breaker for purchase, a more helpful criterion is value. Details >
For centuries, conventional light microscopy was and continues to be the workhorse of labs to visualize cells and cellular details. But the advent of electron microscopy brought about a new level of detail. Let's take a closer look at the two techniques. Details >
Confocal microscopes were designed to get rid of background signal. How do they work? And when do you know it’s time to use one? The answer is in the pinhole. Details >
Fluorescent labeling strategies have become more and more sophisticated and offer ever-new options to improve microscopic imaging. Among the latest are exchangeable HaloTag ligands that put an end to photobleaching for good. Details >
Today’s high-end fluorescence microscopy is unthinkable without lasers. Reason enough to take a closer look at these sophisticated light sources. Details >
Aberrations can give microscopists a hard time. They belong to microscopy like pathogens belong to life. There are ways to bring diverted rays back on track, but some are better than others. The question is: deformable mirror or correction collar? Details >
Every technique that allows to observe cells is more or less invasive and fluorescence microscopy is no exception. Many imaging situations profit from a reduction in light dose as provided by FLEXPOSURE adaptive illumination. Details >
MINFLUX reaches unprecedented spatio-temporal resolution in light microscopy and provides 2D and 3D localization precisions in the single-digit nanometer range. Details >
Ideal imaging conditions are often compromised by imperfections in the optical path. These can severely compromise a microscope’s performance, unless they are eliminated by RAYSHAPE's deformable mirror. Details >
It is a very simple yet very important fact: the localization precision of any superresolution microscope can only be as good as the size of the fluorescent staining allows. In other words, when your fluorescent dye is too big or too far away from the protein you want to label, you will never be able to reach a resolution that is higher than this offset. The good news is: there are ways to reduce the offset between target protein and fluorescent label. And one of these are nanobodies. Details >
The most versatile and therefore most common strategy to bring the dye to the sample is immunofluorescence. In case you always wanted to know how immunofluorescence works and which properties of antibodies make it so powerful and at the same time define its limits! Details >
For STED microscopy, similar sample preparation techniques may be utilized as for conventional microscopy. However, the increase in special resolution requires additional precautions to ensure the structural preservation of the specimen. Details >
The spatial resolution achievable with today’s light microscopes has unveiled life at the scale of individual molecules. Size is no longer a barrier to seeing biology at the most fundamental level. But life is not static. It emerges from movement and change. How do superresolution technologies hold up to the challenges of documenting dynamic biological mechanisms? Details >
Photon numbers from the emitting fluorophore. Width of the PSF. How do they impact the resolution of a microscope? Here’s a simple graphic that lays out those effects. Details >
For all the talk about criteria and definitions, measuring the resolution of a microscope is more nuanced than you’d think. The scales at which microscopes operate today are subject to noise and background that obscure and distort signals. What you use for the measurement can make a big difference. The second article in our "Resolution" series. Details >
A sleek, black-and-orange box transforms your widefield microscope into a confocal and a superresolution STED instrument and your exploration of subcellular structures into a seamless, discovery-rich experience. Carefully designed with masterly engineering, STEDYCON breaks the stereotype of the finicky, hard-to-use scope. It opens new possibilities at the press of a button for any user and almost any location. How does it do it? The secret’s in the box. Details >
Are you surprised that the very nature of light caps the resolution that we can achieve in microscope images? Luckily, there are workarounds to this limit. These workarounds push the amount of detail in an image by manipulating precisely where and when fluorophores are allowed to emit. As such, they provide us with a completely new set of tools to shrink the distance between two points while still being able to resolve them. Details >
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