The growing diversity of functions of microstructures and the development of new high duty materials call for innovative, nondestructive testing methods.  Day after day confocal microscopy is proving itself as a flexible solution to many problems in biological research, material testing, and quality assurance.  Whether you work on pharmaceutical company, food research, academia and health institutions laser scanning microscopy provides non-contact quantitative 3D analysis of microstructures. Using Confocal or two photon microscopy you are able to acquire images with very high resolution and contrast.

 The term confocal means having the same focus.  Therefore the final image corresponds to the point of focus of the sample.  The confocal microscope  is able to filter the out of focus information by means of a confocal pinhole or aperture situated in front of the image plane which allows only the infocus portion of light to be imaged.  Light from below and above the plane of focus of the sample is eliminated producing highly detailed images as the final product.

 Two Photon/ Multiphoton Microscopy use a pulsed infrared laser and have better penetration. Due to the physics of this technique it is able to focus only the in-focus light which decreases photobleaching or destruction of the sample.

 The Two Photon Microscopy equipment includes the Coherent Mira 900 infrared laser pumped with a Verdi V10.  This laser can be tuned to the 710-980 nm region.  This tunable capability gives the flexibility of performing two photon microscopy studies.

 This facility is under the supervision of   Dr. José A. Lasalde, Director of Ion Channel Structure and Neurodegenerative Diseases Laboratory, University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus. Dr. Alejandro Ortiz is the manager and the Dr.Janice Salas, optometrist, is the confocal specialist. 

 The Confocal Microscopy Facility is equipped with a Zeiss LSM 510 confocal scan head which can be used with either a Zeiss Axiovert 100M inverted microscope or a Zeiss Axioplan 2 upright microscope.  Confocal images can be acquired using Argon laser 458nm, 477nm, 488nm, 514nm and He/Ne laser 543nm and 633nm.

The most common applications of our facility include:  3D reconstruction organelle structure and function, probe rationing, conjugated antibodies, DNA and RNA measurements, FRAP (florescence recovery after photobleaching), raw material surface imaging, quantitative and qualitative analysis of samples among others.