Olympus has introduced a 40x silicone oil microscope objective, its latest innovation in silicone immersion microscope optics. The new objective fills out the company’s full line of silicone oil optics, which already includes 30x and 60x objectives designed for live cell and time-lapse imaging. According to the company, their silicone oil objectives markedly improve optical performance for live-cell confocal, widefield fluorescence, multiphoton, differential interference contrast (DIC) and other applications.
Both the new intermediate-magnification UPLSAPO 40x and the existing UPLSAPO 60x objective are designed specifically to work with the Olympus Zero Drift continuous autofocus system for extended time-lapse imaging. In addition, all three of the objectives are compatible with protocols that use repeat-single-shot autofocus.
In contrast to water immersion objectives, silicone oil optics are useful in long-term imaging experiments where water evaporation is a pervasive issue. While water immersion lenses are traditionally used to reduce refraction index mismatch, they are not practical for long-term, time-lapse imaging because of moisture loss and low viscosity.
Compared to conventional oil immersion objectives, the new 40x, 1.25 numericalaperture (NA), 0.3mm working distance objective improves resolution and reduces loss of contrast due to spherical aberration. By reducing the mismatch between the refractive index of the specimen and that of the immersion medium into which the tip of the objective is dipped, silicone oil provides higher resolution and brightness, especially when using the microscope to image into thick samples.
Date: September 12, 2013
Filed Under: Drug Discovery
