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See the Invisible With a Fluorescent Microscope

Have you ever wondered how doctors and scientists seem to know exactly how cell divides, what they look like, and what they do? At some point in your life, you may have peeked under a microscope in a biology class. You probably felt the images weren't that interesting or colorful. But if you had done the looking through a fluorescent microscope, you would have whistled a a different tune. Why?

Light and Colors

Contrary to the common field microscope that uses reflection and absorption techniques to create magnified images of specimen, the fluorescent microscope uses light to excite specimens to emit light of longer wavelength. Fluorescence is an intrinsic property of substances where it becomes luminescent when excited by a radiation. Simply put, a fluorescent microscope is a light microscope with extended capabilities and added features. A more intense light is used in microscopy that excites fluorescence in the specimen which then emits a longer light wave length. Scientists use markers to distinguish emitted wavelengths by different colors. This technology shows digitally clear color images of microscopic organisms under probe. This technique of using transmitted light through a specimen is known as Kohler illumination, after the brilliant mind who sought to overcome the limitations of previous technologies, August Kohler.

Fluorescent Microscope in Life Sciences

Unlike metallurgical microscopes used for inspecting ceramics, metals and other inorganic materials, the fluorescence microscope finds its best uses in biology and life sciences. Rapidly expanding observation technique in medicine and biology, a range of more sophisticated techniques has evolved from it. More advanced technologies such as the multiphoton and canfocal microscopies are now combined with chromophore and flourophore advances now make intracellular observations even in unicellular molecules possible. Where the cell was acknowledged to be the smallest biological unit a few decades past, components of the human DNA are no distinguishable observations under these powerful tools.

Some have an inverted frame most suitable for viewing tissue cultures and similar applications. These designs provide illumination using an episcopic optical pathway.

Examples of Fluorescence Microscopes

Olympus BX51 Upright Microscope is a modern design of an epi-flourescent microscope with a vertical illuminator. The illuminator houses a xenon or mercury arc lamp and a turret of filter cubes. Source light travels through the lamp house through two diaphragms and into the cube holding the excitation and emission filters, as well as a dichroic mirror

Olympus IX70 Inverted Microscope. This inverted frame uses epi-illumination from an internal lamphouse. Light travels from the lamphouse via a collector lens into a cube holding the filters and a dichroic mirror

Both these examples are professional or research grade equipment. These both show the full range of capabilities a basic illuminating microscope is capable of. There are even more powerful microscopes with far more advanced features using highly advanced techniques. One of the more popular ones, confocal microscopy, now offers point-scanning capabilities with the latest from Olympus, the FluoView Laser Scanning Confocal Microscopy.

Other highly advanced techniques like Multiphoton Excitation Microscopy combine multiple techniques to capture high-definition, three-dimensional, and full color images of specimens. These are the best there is in research equipment, and these will change your life from the very first instant that you use them.

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Yes, you can see the invisible with a
fluorescent microscope
. Get started using one - or a
metallurgical microscope
- and learn more about
Kohler illumination
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