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  • Camera Sensitivity

    Camera sensitivity is one of the most important aspects of camera performance – with inadequate sensitivity, your imaging experiment may simply be impossible. However, sensitivity is a broad topic dependant on a large number of factors, and cannot be represented by one value alone – while one camera may outperform another at one light level or the exposure time, the situation may be reversed at higher light or longer exposures.

  • Citadel Chamber Design

    Scientific cameras are an integral part of any imaging system, featuring cutting-edge sensors that enable researchers to obtain high-quality, high sensitivity images of their sample(s) of choice. These sensors feature complex electronics and millions of silicon pixel elements, and as a result are fragile and highly susceptible to damage, even from moisture and particulates in the air.

  • Imaging Speed

    The speed of your camera can determine what samples your imaging system can detect, especially when working with live dynamic samples or techniques that image fast biological processes such as calcium imaging or voltage imaging. Even if your samples are fixed, camera speed still impacts your imaging, such as the ease at which you can pan across your sample while the image updates.

  • Correlated Multi-Sampling

    In scientific camera sensors, the process of reading out pixels is subject to an error known as read noise. This can impact imaging, especially when working with low signals and only a handful of photons. If a CCD camera has a read noise of ±10 electrons and is receiving a signal of ~20 electrons, it will have a huge impact on the sensitivity, with the camera unable to distinguish between signal and noise.

  • Types Of Camera Sensors

    Quantitative scientific cameras are vital for sensitive, fast imaging of a variety of samples for a variety of applications. Camera technologies have advanced over time, from the earliest cameras to truly modern camera technologies, which can push the envelope of what is possible in scientific imaging and allow us to see the previously unseen.

  • Calcium Imaging

    Calcium (Ca2+) is one of the most relevant ions in the body as it is essential for e.g. the accurate timing and function of interneuronal communication or cardiomyocytes. In a physiological system, intracellular and extracellular Ca2+ concentrations ([Ca2+]) are usually not in equilibrium and the concentration gradient is maintained by the cell with a very complex system of ion channels and transporters.

  • Fluorescence Imaging

    Tissues, cells, and the smaller structures inside cells (organelles) are mostly water and are therefore transparent. Imaging tiny see-through bags of water results in images that don’t contain a lot of information, and in microscopy, it is vital to have some sort of contrast or stain that will give areas of the sample color and make them far easier to see.

  • Extended Dynamic Range

    The Retiga E7 CMOS camera features three different readout modes: Speed, Long Exposure, and the all-new Extended Dynamic Range (EDR). While Speed is a classic CMOS mode that features imaging across a large sensor at high speeds, Long Exposure and EDR feature an ultra-low dark current of 0.001 e–/p/s and allow for exposures of up to an hour, bringing CMOS into the long exposure regime, previously only occupied by CCD cameras.

  • PrimeEnhance

    There is currently a revolution in computational imaging, pairing the power of a cutting-edge scientific camera, such as the Prime Family of CMOS cameras from Teledyne Photometrics, with powerful graphics processors from the latest generation of GPUs. Machine learning, data processing, and the camera-PC interface are all going to help imaging evolve, through methods such as denoising and localization.

  • Lenses and Optics

    Optics are elements that alter the travel of light to achieve some effect. In microscopy, these effects commonly include the magnification of the light coming from the sample, the manipulation of light pattern or color, and the interaction of light with itself. In this note, the interaction of light with matter leading to refraction, the ability of light to be focused by a lens, and the manner in which a lens or collection of lenses gives magnification are presented.

  • QuantView

    With scientific cameras, emitted signals of photons from a sample are converted into an analogue voltage signal of photoelectrons, which is then converted again into a digital signal of grey levels. The conversion of photons to electrons is based on quantum efficiency, and the conversion of electrons to grey levels is based on the gain and bit depth of the camera.

  • Camera Mounts

    A microscope camera mount (also known as a lens mount) is an essential piece of hardware that interfaces between a scientific imaging camera and photo port of a microscope. This is an essential interface that secures the camera to the microscope.