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The confocal microscopy and image analysis core provides instrumentation and expertise to support the acquisition, processing and analysis of both fluorescence and bright-field micrographs captured from fixed tissue sections, whole mounts, or from either fixed or live cells.

Digital micrographs can be captured from any one of four different microscopes including an Olympus FV300 Laser Scanning Confocal Microscope capable of collecting 3-dimensional or time series data on specimens containing up to 4 separate fluorochromes.

An image processing and analysis workstation provides tools to process and collect data from digital micrographs. The capabilities of this system include deconvolution, co-localization, 3-dimensional reconstruction, pixel-intensity measurements, and Morphometry. Analysis can be conducted using both manual and automated approaches.

Custom cryosectioning, staining, image acquisition and analysis are also available.

Instrumentation Available

• An Olympus Fluoview confocal microscopy system consisting of an IX70 microscope, four lasers (blue diode, argon, green HeNe, and red HeNe) a laser combiner and FV300 confocal scanner, a bright-field detector, a Spot RT color CCD camera, a computer work station, and a Kodak 8600 dye-sublimation printer.
• An Olympus IX70 microscope equipped with Narashigi micromanipulators and an Eppendorf microinjection system,
• A Zeiss Axiophot microscope equipped for epifluoresence with an Optronix color CCD camera.
• A Nikon SMZ1500 stereo-zoom microscope equipped for both bright-field and fluorescent work linked to a Nikon color CCD camera.
• A Thermo-Shandon Cryotome equipped with an Instrumedics tape transfer device.
• A Leica microtome.
• An image analysis workstation that consists of a DELL Optiplex GX620 processor with a Radeon X600SE video card, Adobe photoshop image processing software and Image-Pro Plus image processing and analysis software. The image analysis software consists of a basic analysis module with plug-in modules for image deconvolution (Sharp Stack Plus Ver 5.0), and 3 dimensional reconstruction (3D Constructor)

Questions concerning suitability of the system for particular applications can be directed to Dr. Darryl Hadsell dhadsell@bcm.tmc.edu, Associate Professor Pediatrics and Molecular and Cellular Biology

Confocal Core use