Histochemistry and Cell Biology

, Volume 128, Issue 6, pp 499–505 | Cite as

Virtual slit scanning microscopy

Original Paper
First Online:
Accepted:

Abstract

We present a novel slit scanning confocal microscope with a CCD camera image sensor and a virtual slit aperture for descanning that can be adjusted during post-processing. A very efficient data structure and mathematical criteria for aligning the virtual aperture guarantee the ease of use. We further introduce a method to reduce the anisotropic lateral resolution of slit scanning microscopes. System performance is evaluated against a spinning disk confocal microscope on identical specimens. The virtual slit scanning microscope works as the spinning disk type and outperforms on thick specimens.

Keywords

Confocal microscopy Microscopy Scanning microscopy 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Andreas Vonderheit for preparing the biological specimens and Dr. Gabor Csúcs of the Light Microscopy Center (LMC) of ETH Zurich for assisting us with the spinning disk confocal microscope.

Reference

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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag 2007

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Nanotechnology GroupETH ZurichZurichSwitzerland
  2. 2.Advanced Light Microscopy FacilityEuropean Molecular Biology LaboratoryHeidelbergGermany

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