Confocal Microscopy

Confocal microscopy offers several advantages over conventional optical microscopy, including controllable depth of field, the elimination of image degrading out-of-focus information, and the ability to collect serial optical sections from thick specimens. The key to the confocal approach is the use of spatial filtering to eliminate out-of-focus light or flare in specimens that are thicker than the plane of focus. There has been a tremendous explosion in the popularity of confocal microscopy in recent years, due in part to the relative ease with which extremely high-quality images can be obtained from specimens prepared for conventional optical microscopy, and in its great number of applications in many areas of current research interest.

Review Articles


Interactive Tutorials

  • Spectral Imaging with Linear Unmixing

    Discover how individual fluorophores can be identified within a complex mixture.

  • Spectral Imaging with FRET Biosensors

    Spectral imaging is of significant advantage in separating the overlapping emission spectra of fluorescent proteins and other fluorophores in dynamic fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) experiments, which are often complicated by the requirement for exceedingly fast image capture.

  • Lambda Stacks and Spectral Signatures

    Learn how individual spectra are represented as narrow wavebands in lambda stacks.


Galleries

Confocal Microscopy

Enjoy the beauty of autofluorescence in thick sections of animal and plant tissues.

Movies


Selected Literature References


Contributing Authors

Kenneth W. Dunn and Exing Wang - Department of Medicine, Indiana University, School of Medicine, 1120 South Drive, FH115, Indianapolis, Indiana 46202-5116.

Stephen W. PaddockEric J. Hazen, and Peter J. DeVries - Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706.

James B. Pawley - Department of Zoology, 1117 W. Johnson Dr., University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706.

Jeffrey M. Larson and Stanley A. Schwartz - Nikon Instruments, Inc., 1300 Walt Whitman Road, Melville, New York, 11747.

Matthew Parry-HillThomas J. Fellers, and Michael W. Davidson - National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, 1800 East Paul Dirac Dr., The Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, 32310.

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Confocal Microscopy

Introduction

Review Articles

Interactive Tutorials

Galleries

Literature References

Contributing Authors