The difference between fluorescence microscope and ordinary microscope
Recently, I tried to make some frozen sections of mice, and then I used a fluorescent microscope to see if the virus I injected was in the brain area I wanted. Some basic principles of fluorescence microscopy need to be learned briefly, and I will share them here.
Fluorescence microscope uses ultraviolet light as a light source to irradiate the object to be inspected, so that the object emits light, and then observe the object under the microscope. It is mainly used for immunofluorescence cells. It is mainly composed of a light source, a filter plate system and an optical system to observe the fluorescent image of the sample through the magnification of the eyepiece and objective lens. Let's take a look at the difference between this fluorescence microscope and an ordinary optical microscope.
1. In terms of lighting methods
The illumination method of the fluorescence microscope is generally episcopic, that is to say, the light source is projected on the test sample through the objective lens.
2. In terms of resolution
Fluorescence microscopes use ultraviolet light as the light source. The wavelength is relatively short, but the resolution is higher than that of ordinary optical microscopes.
3. The difference in the filter
The fluorescence microscope uses two special filters, which are used in front of the light source to filter out visible light, and used between the objective lens and the eyepiece to filter out ultraviolet light, which can protect human eyes.
Fluorescence microscope is also a kind of optical microscope, mainly because the wavelength excited by fluorescence microscope is short, so this leads to the difference in structure and use between fluorescence microscope and ordinary microscope. Most fluorescence microscopes have a good function of capturing weak light , so under extremely weak fluorescence, its imaging ability is also good. Coupled with the continuous improvement of fluorescence microscopes in recent years, the noise has also been greatly reduced. Therefore more and more fluorescence microscopes are used.
