Spinning disk confocal microscope

The University of Turku started a process in order to acquire a fully motorized spinning-disc confocal microscope for combined high-speed, high-throughput, and high-resolution analysis of a large variety of biological specimens, ranging from live single cells to fixed thick tissue sections and model organisms. The system requirements included: 1) A versatile fully motorized, research grade, inverted light microscope body, equipped for both fluorescence and trans-illumination imaging, and hardware and software to enable multi-colour image acquisition of 2D and 3D single position, automatic multi-position, and tiled image data sets in fluorescence and trans-illumination imaging mode. The diagonal field of view of at least one camera port should be ≥ 25 mm. 2) A spinning disc unit with a diagonal field of view of ≥ 22mm, an imaging scan speed of ≥200 frames per second, and field uniformizer optics that enable flat field imaging up to (or near) the full diagonal field of view of the spinning disc unit. 3) A back-illuminated CMOS camera with a pixel size of ≤ 6.5 µm and a diagonal field of view that takes maximum advantage of the field of view of the microscope camera port as well as the maximum field of view of the spinning disc unit. 4) A high power laser combiner that spans from near UV excitation at 405 nm to NIR excitation at λ≥730 nm. The laser combiner must contain a minimum of 5 laser lines at (or near) 405, 488, 561, 640, and 730 nm. 5) A range of research grade microscope objectives suitable for imaging a broad range of samples and sample configurations including for diffraction-limited imaging of fixed samples. 6) The microscope system must include a black cage incubator with calibrated temperature and CO2 control including sensors suitable for monitoring the temperature both in the incubator and in the sample media.