Real-Time Laser-Scanning Microscopes

Two new real-time scanning microscopes use a resonant galvanometer to achieve a scanning rate of between 30-130 frames per second.

Fast scanning rates are essential for recording important physiologic changes, such as calcium, pH, and membrane potential, that occur in living cells within tens of milliseconds. Information on these processes can often be lost with current laser scanning microscopes because they are based on linear servo galvanometers. These are limited by a lower scanning rate, typically requiring 0.5-1.9 seconds to complete a full scan of the field of view.

The two systems, the RTS2000 (confocal) and RTS2000MP (multiphoton), were jointly developed by Bio-Rad Microscience Ltd. (Hemel Hempstead, UK) and Nikon Corp. (Tokyo, Japan) and are based on Nikon's RCM8000 system.In the RTS2000 MP, video-rate imaging is combined with the benefits of multiphoton microscopy, which include increased depth penetration and reduced photobleaching, leading to extended organism lifetimes. Running on Windows NT, both systems benefit from accurate time stamping of large image files and real-time emission ratio image display, efficient infra-red beam delivery with simple beam alignment, and real-time hard disk data recording.



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