What is a confocal microscope?

1. What is a confocal microscope and how does it work?
2. What is confocal microscopy used for?
3. What is a confocal microscope and what are its advantages?
4. What is confocal microscopy in biology?
5. What is the difference between confocal and fluorescence microscopy?
6. Why confocal microscopy is called confocal?
7. What is inverted microscope used for?
8. Can confocal microscopy be used with live tissues?
9. What is the magnification of confocal microscopy?
10. What are the advantages and disadvantages of confocal microscopy?
11. What does confocal mean in English?
12. Who uses a confocal microscope?
13. What is a pinhole in microscopy?
14. How do you prepare a sample for confocal microscopy?

What is a confocal microscope and how does it work?

Confocal microscopy uses light from a laser through the objective of a standard light microscope to excite a specimen within a narrow plane of focus. Any emission of light from out-of-focus planes is rejected by the pinhole, or confocal aperture.

What is confocal microscopy used for?

Confocal microscopy is widely used for fluorescence imaging in the life sciences. The last decade has seen advances in illumination sources, detectors, fluorescent probes, optics, and sample preparation techniques, which provide improvements in different combinations of speed, depth, and resolution.

What is a confocal microscope and what are its advantages?

Confocal microscopy offers several advantages over conventional widefield optical microscopy, including the ability to control depth of field, elimination or reduction of background information away from the focal plane (that leads to image degradation), and the capability to collect serial optical sections from thick ...

What is confocal microscopy in biology?

Confocal microscopy is an optical imaging technique that provides very high spatial resolution and contrast compared with the conventional wide-field optical microscopy with additional advantages such as control over field depth, minimal background signature, and ability to collect serial optical sections from thick ...

What is the difference between confocal and fluorescence microscopy?

The fluorescence microscope allows to detect the presence and localization of fluorescent molecules in the sample. The confocal microscope is a specific fluorescent microscope that allows obtaining 3D images of the sample with good resolution. ... This allows to reconstruct a 3D image of the sample.

Why confocal microscopy is called confocal?

In contrast, a confocal microscope uses point illumination (see Point Spread Function) and a pinhole in an optically conjugate plane in front of the detector to eliminate out-of-focus signal – the name "confocal" stems from this configuration.

What is inverted microscope used for?

Inverted microscopes are useful for observing living cells or organisms at the bottom of a large container (e.g., a tissue culture flask) under more natural conditions than on a glass slide, as is the case with a conventional microscope.

Can confocal microscopy be used with live tissues?

A major attraction of confocal reflection microscopy for biomedical imaging is the ability to image unlabeled living tissue. In fact, the technique has been utilized to image a variety of different tissues, including brain, skin, bone, teeth, and eye tissue.

What is the magnification of confocal microscopy?

In general, the maximum magnification of a confocal microscope is 1000x, assuming the use of a combination of a 100x objective and a 10x ocular.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of confocal microscopy?

Advantages of confocal microscopy include rapid, noninvasive technique allowing early diagnosis and management and high resolution images[2] as compared to CT scan, MRI and USG for dermatological use. Disadvantages of confocal microscopy include its high cost and relatively smaller field of vision.

What does confocal mean in English?

Definition of confocal

: having the same foci confocal ellipses confocal lenses.

Who uses a confocal microscope?

One of the most exciting uses of confocal microscopy is in vivo study of tissues. Recently, confocal microscopy has been used to visualize platelets during the aggregation process, giving researchers a better understanding of their role in the immune response.

What is a pinhole in microscopy?

As all conventional light sources are usually not spot-shaped but have a significant extension, the light source is projected on a tiny aperture, the pinhole, acting as a spot-shaped source. ... It is this detection pinhole, which usually is referred to when we mention the “pinhole” in a confocal microscope.

How do you prepare a sample for confocal microscopy?

Specimens that have three-dimensional structure that is to be studied with the confocal microscope, have to be mounted in such a way as to preserve the structure. Some sort of spacer, such as fishing line or a piece of coverslip, is commonly placed between the slide and the coverslip to avoid deforming the specimen.