Instrument's unique combination of high speed, image quality and sensitivity will provide exclusive insights into the cell's highly transient and dynamic events
Carl Zeiss has launched a dedicated live cell imaging system capable of collecting up to 120 full frame images per second, claimed to be 20 times faster than any other confocal system. Called LSM 5 Live, the new system is said to deliver faster, brighter, more evenly illuminated and better contrasted images than ever before and underlines the company's technological leadership in fluorescence microscopy.
The pinnacle of the award-wining LSM 5 family, the new instrument's unique combination of high speed, image quality and sensitivity will provide exclusive insights into the cell's highly transient and dynamic events.
It is ideally suited to studies at the forefront of live cell imaging, such as the movement of individual intracellular molecules or measuring the dynamics of the cytoskeleton during such processes as cell adhesion, cell motility and cell signalling.
Until now, these ultra-fast processes have been at or beyond the limits of microscopical systems, but the LSM 5 Live captures events of the order of microseconds.
"The combination of high resolution, sensitivity and speed is essential to track the communication and interaction of cells, organisms and structures," says Aubrey Lambert, Carl Zeiss UK.
"LSM 5 Live now makes that possible. "Unlike any other fast-scanning technology, the Live system does not sacrifice excitation or emission efficiency and delivers outstanding image quality and exceptional sensitivity and opens up a new time window for confocal microscopy.
"The speed, resolving power and sensitivity of the LSM 5 Live are driven by a completely new optical concept specially tailored for studies on living specimens.
"Totally different to any other system, the light beam is shaped into laser light of rectangular cross section and focused precisely on the groundbreaking colour-independent AchroGate beam splitter.
"This guarantees virtually 100% excitation efficiency and emission yield at all wavelengths to deliver maximum performance even on thick or weakly fluorescent specimens, common problems in live cell imaging".
An ultra-fast CCD line detector picks up the shaped laser light to allow parallel imaging of 512 pixels with high quantum yield.
It will capture up to 120 confocal images per second at a resolution of 512x512 pixels and can attain 505 or 1010 frames per second at reduced formats of 512x100 pixels or 512x50 pixels.
This is combined with zoom optics and an ultrafast Z-drive that permit 3D image stacks to be acquired every second, especially useful for developmental biologists.
