UChicago Light Microscopy Core Facility

FV1000 Laser Scanning Confocal Microscope
Click for product information on the Olympus website

Fluoview_1000

Overview: The Olympus FV1000 provides laser scanning confocal imaging across the spectrum, from violet to near IR.

Features:

Olympus IX81 inverted platform with Prior xy and z motorized stage for precise control of volume and focus plus tiling or multi-point sampling.
Available Bioptics dish heater, Olympus incubation / CO2 control chamber and independent objective heater to minimize thermal drift.
DIC prisms available for 60x and 100x objectives. Brightfield and DIC optics in an automated turret.
Three fluorescence PMTs and one transmitted light detector for simultaneous or sequential imaging of up to three fluorophorescence channels and one transmitted light channel per experiment.
Olympus image capture software with saving as .oib or .oif image format and export to .tif format capable.
Capable of z-stack, timelapse, multipoint and photobleaching/photoactivation with software based wizards. Live plot window and image triggering available.

Objectives:

4x / NA 0.13 dry (UPlanFLN)
10x / NA 0.30 dry (UPlanFl)
40x / NA 0.75 dry (UPlanFl)
60x / NA 1.42 oil (PlanApoN)
100x / NA 1.40 oil (UPlanSApo)

Excitation lasers:

Four lasers/six lines for excitiaton: 405nm (DAPI), 458 (CFP), 488 (GFP), 515 (YFP), 543 (Cy3, Texas Red), 633 (Cy5)

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Olympus MVX10 MacroView
Click for product information on the Olympus website

This product is no longer available in the core facility as of November 30, 2011.

Overview: The Olympus MVX10 MacroView system allows for imaging of large samples and whole 35mm dishes with exceptional brightness and detail. It features a user-friendly design, high resolution color camera (great for histology imaging) and a four position fluorescence filter turret for two color (green/red) plus brightfield fluorescence imaging. Oblique lighting is also available for thick or opaque samples.

Features:

High resolution (6.45 micron pixel) color CCD camera.
Huge field of view (up to 55mm at lowest magnification).
Arclamp (two color fluorescence), brightfield and oblique lighting options.
Image capture through user-friendly Olympus software.
Easy to use autoexpose and white balance features.
Optional faux-stereo viewing.

Objectives:

0.63x / NA 0.15
2x / NA 0.5
Analog mono zoom feature (0.63x to 6.3x) increases magnification up to 12.5x
Optional 2x magnification changer

Excitation and Emission filters:

greens -- (GFP long pass and GFP bandpass filters)
reds -- (RFP long pass filter)
Transmitted light for brightfield and histology
Oblique lighting for large / opaque samples

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Olympus FSX-100 widefield/histology Microscope in-a-box
Click for product information on the Olympus website

This product is no longer available in the core facility as of October 3, 2011

FSX-100
Overview: Simplified micrcoscopy platform with macro image for framing, plus automatic focus and exposure time for ease of image capture. Fully enclosed design allows for darkroom-free imaging. High resolution color camera gives beautiful images of imunohistochemistry or fluorescence.

Features:

Fully enclosed, inverted platform designed for imaging slide-mounted, fixed samples on #1.5 thickness coverglass.
Widefield maging in full color (brightfield) or up to three fluorescence channels.
"Macro view" slide scanning images the entire slide for easy identification of areas of interest (unfortunately, this whole slide image cannot be saved).
High resolution (6.45x 6.45 um pixels) color CCD camera capable of 12.5 megapixel images (up to 4080 x 3072 pixels per image).
Fully automated focus and exposure settings allow for fast image aquistion.
Optional automated tiling feature.
Automated z-drive for z-stacks.

Objectives:

macro: 10x / NA 0.4
imaging: 40x / NA 0.95
Optical zoom of 0.42x - 2.0x giving final magnifications from 4x - 80x

Excitation and Emission filters:

phase contrast or full color imaging with white light
blue -- ex: 360-370nm em: 420-460nm dichroic: 400nm (DAPI)
green -- ex: 460-495nm em: 510-550nm dichroic: 505nm (FITC, GFP)
near red -- ex: 530-550nm em: 575LP dichroic: 570nm (Cy3, TexRed, mCherry)

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NanoZoomer HT 2.0 Whole Slide Scanner
Click for product information on the Hamamatsu website

This product is no longer available in the core facility as of September 21, 2010.

NanoZoomer

Overview: The NanoZoomer HT 2.0 is a high speed, high resolution whole side scanner for digital pathology. Histology only for now, although a three color (blue, green, red) fluorescence option is coming soon.

Note: we are running this microsocpe as a drop-off service. Simply drop off your slides, fill out a short form and leave the rest to us. We will scan in your slides, upload the data to our server and let you know when your data is ready.

Features:

Cassettes hold up to 210 slides at a time.
Three chip TDI camera from Hamamatsu.
Seemless tiling of images with a 0.23 or 0.46 um pixel size for high resolution imaging of an entire sample, even if it covers the entire slide.
Automated focus, white balance and exposure time for streamlined setup.
1x whole slide reference image for sample identification
Option to name images based on barcode information
Optional z-stack creation for thicker samples (>40um slices)
User friendly, free to download (PC only) software for post-capture image processing

Objectives on the microscope:

20x / NA 0.75 dry with magnification changer for 40x

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Olympus FV10i-W (water immersion) confocal-in-a-box
Click for product information on the Olympus website

FV10i-W This product is no longer available in the core facility as of August 2, 2010.

If you used this microscope, we would love to hear your feedback. What did you like, what did you dislike, are there any features you think should be added?

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