Event Details
"Principles of Confocal Microscopy and its Biomedical Application. "
BioNest-IASST has organized an online Workshop on “Principles of Confocal Microscopy and its Biomedical Application.” on 18th February 2021, Thursday from 11 am to 1 pm. It was co-organized by Leica Microsytems. Dr. Tania Paul Das-Manager (S&T) of BioNest-IASST welcomed the participants and introduced Mr. Sujoy Dey who is the Leica Application Specialist and also the orator of the workshop. The workshop initiated with the opening statement of the Director of IASST- Dr. Ashis Kr. Mukherjee. Almost 65 participants registered to attend the workshop. During the session, participants understood the essence of using Confocal Microscope and also the Working Principle & Variants of Confocal microscope. Live-cell imaging by 'Stellaris Confocal Microscope' was demonstrated and the workshop ended with the Q&A round. Dr. Devasish Chowdhury, Associate Professor, Physical Science Division(IASST) gave the vote of thanks to the whole team of Leica Microsystems and Team BioNest-IASST for organizing the Workshop.
About: A traditional simple microscope creates a murky and fuzzy image of 3-dimensional objects, because light from all areas of the object, not just the plane of focus, enters the microscope. This problem has been solved by the confocal scanning laser microscope (CSLM), or simply, confocal microscope. This microscope is used in life sciences, semiconductors,and materials science. In the 1950s, Marvin Minsky first developed the confocal microscope at Harvard University.
Principle: A confocal microscope uses laser beams instead of lights. The laser beams are released from their source and then focused onto a fluorescent stained sample. The fluorochrome stained sample will be excited and then it will emit fluorescent lights. These fluorescent lights will travel back into the objective lens through the same path that the laser travels. Confocal microscope produces a very low-intensity light, so the light is amplified by a photomultiplier tube (PMT). Photomultipliers have the ability to amplify a faint signal around one million times without introducing a single noise. After that, the PMT releases an electrical signal, which is then converted into an image by using a computer.
Applications: Used for the examination of various eye diseases, used for qualitative analysis, and quantification of endothelial cells of the cornea, used in cases of keratomycosis. It also widely used in the pharmaceutical industry to control the quality and uniformity of the drug distribution. It is also used for optical scanning and recovery of damaged historical audio.
Advantages: It creates a high-resolution 3D image of the specimen and both living and fixed cells can be used. It can be used in the collection of serial optical sections and illuminates uniformly across the focus points.
Disadvantages: Confocal Microscopes are very expensive and it contains a limited number of excitation wavelengths, with very narrow bands.