The Digital microscopy facility is a broad, high level, light microscopy facility. It gives general microscopy support and provides access to advanced microscopes to all researchers in the Institute. At present the facility harbors nine microscopes, each with its own special functionality and together forming a complementary set of instruments. The facility has three operators (2.4 fte).

Equipment and Applications

The equipment consists of four confocals, four wide-field microscopes and a TIRF setup. All microscopes are of course suited to “manually” capture images of fixed or living samples. Except one, they are all fully motorized and well equipped for automated, un-attended image acquisition. Three confocals, two wide-field microscopes and the TIRF setup are equipped with home build 37 °C, 5% CO2 incubation chambers around the microscope, providing accurately controlled stable conditions, essential for demanding time-lapse studies. Four of these (two confocals, one wide-field system and the TIRF) are also equipped with a hardware autofocus system which can correct for focus drift in time. Unlike a software autofocus it does not require images to be taken and hence does not function at the expense of bleaching and photo-damage. All in all, the combination of the tightly controlled home build live-cell systems and the hardware autofocus greatly increases the chance of successful live-cell imaging, especially in case of long time-lapses at multiple positions.