Uncovering Confocal Microscopy – Pairing Applications & Techniques

Epifluorescence microscopes are extremely useful to visualise thin samples or tissue sections. Still, when samples are a bit thicker, the out of focus light will decrease significatively the Signal to Noise Ratio of the image. Because of reduced signal to noise, the structures of interest will be surrounded by “haze” becoming more difficult or nearly impossible to visualise. It became necessary to develop another type of imaging that could deal with the out-focus light, and that would allow optical sectioning of the sample.

The confocal microscope was developed to address these issues. Confocal microscopes discard the out of focus light using pinholes. Optical sectioning of the sample is achieved using the pinholes in which the in-focus light reaches the detector, while the out of focus light is discarded. In this webinar, Dr Claudia Florindo, will explain what a confocal microscope is, and discuss the differences between single-point confocal and multipoint confocal.