The MicroscopyU knowledge database is a warehouse of information covering the theory and practice of optical microscopy, digital imaging, photomicrography, and contrast enhancement using specialized optical techniques. Based on an extensive dictionary of optical microscopy, our searchable database can be easily utilized to obtain information about all phases of microscopy, photomicrography, digital imaging, and the physics of lenses, light, and other forms of electromagnetic radiation. You may enter the database by clicking on the button below. Additional information about how to use the database and interpretation of search results is provided in the text beneath the button link.

The database search engine is designed around the Microsoft SQL Server, which catalogs all of the information stored in the knowledge database and presents results based on the presence of selected keywords. A document result returned by the search engine often contains links to more extensive coverage of topics related to the keywords. In all cases, the highest rankings are presented first with documents having fewer keywords being listed in descending order.

Visitors are advised to use the highest possible screen resolution when viewing messages in the knowledge database. Low screen resolutions (VGA; 640 x 480 pixels and SVGA; 800 x 600 pixels) will severely limit your ability to view all of the contents within the discussion boxes. The minimal recommended screen resolution is 1024 x 768 pixels with a color depth of 32,768 (16 bit), which is attainable with most video cards having at least two megabytes (2 Mb) of video RAM.

A typical document presented as a search result will now be examined and discussed in detail.

Example Search Result: The stylized text box presented in Figure 1 illustrates a result returned by the knowledge database search engine when the query was "abbe condenser". Control of the search parameters is accomplished with a series of check boxes, a text input box, and a pull-down menu housed within the blue title box.

To initiate a search, type in the appropriate keywords and either depress the return key on the computer keyboard, or click on the Search link positioned beside the input box. Adjacent to the text input box is a pull-down menu that controls the number of document summaries to be returned. The default number is 5 documents per page, with alternate choices of 5, 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 documents per page. To view documents not visible within the browser window, use the scroll bar positioned on the right portion of the frame containing the document information.

Search criteria can also be controlled using the check boxes positioned directly beneath the text input box. The Highlight Results check box enables highlighting of the specific keywords used in the query. In the example shown (Figure 1), the words abbe and condenser will be highlighted for each instance that occurs (marked Matching Highlights in Figure 1) in the returned documents.

Placing a checkmark in the Whole Words Only check box restricts the search engine to words having a blank space before and after the word. In other words, searching with the keyword Abb with this check box enabled will not return Abbe as a result. For a broader search, select the All Words check box, which will return all results containing the phrase Abb (including Abbe). Activating the Use These Words Exactly check box will restrict the search to only the keywords contained in the text input box. For example, a search with Abbe Condenser in the input field will return all results that have these words in succession, but not entries that have either Abbe or Condenser alone.

The Next arrow button, located directly above the returned results in the blue border, will jump to the next set of returns if the total number of returns exceeds that selected in the pull-down menu. To the left of this button is an indicator that shows the current numerical status of the returned results, and to the right is the number of returned results per page.