Lambert Instruments exhibiting at BiOS 2008 and SPIE Photonics West

Leutingewolde, The Netherlands - Jan. 18, 2008…SPIE Photonic West is the only photonics event in North America covering the entire spectrum of light-driven technologies.

BiOS 2008 (part of SPIE Photonic West) is the world’s largest and most prestigious international biomedical optics and imaging conference. The BiOS exhibition provides the ideal venue for interacting with the early adopters of the newest biomedical technologies, as well as a launch pad for new applications and technologies in diagnostics, therapeutics, and instrumentation. For companies involved in biomedical optics, BiOS is the place to see and be seen.

Biomedical Optics Exhibition: January 19-20, 2008
Photonics West Exhibition: January 22-24, 2008

Lambert Instruments Widefield FLIM at Focus on Microscopy 2007

Leutingewolde, The Netherlands - March 15, 2007…Lambert Instruments will demonstrate its Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging Microscopy system at next conference in the Focus On Microscopy (FOM) series. The conference will take place in Valencia (Spain) from Tuesday, April 10th to Friday, April 13th.

The LIFA, Lambert Instruments FLIM Attachment, will be attached to a Leica DMI4000B microscope, although it can be attached to any widefield fluorescence microscope. It shows the complete, ready-to-use frequency domain FLIM system with acquisition times down to seconds. The LI FLIM software program enables the easy acquisition of single frequency stacks, time series and multifrequency stacks. The analysis is done in each pixel or by moveable, freeform, ROI’s. It shows the histograms, polar plot as well as the multi-component lifetime data.

Typical topics of the upcoming FOM conference include time-resolved fluorescence as the “F”-techniques FLIM and FRET. On the morning of Friday, April 13th, Dr. Ria Oosterveld will give a presentation on “FLIM combined with TIRF or confocal imaging” in the parallel session in Auditorium 2: “Advanced fluorescence imaging modes, FLIM, FRAP, FRET etc”. See the program for details.

Tags: fluorescence, FLIM

Improved Quantum Efficiency with Gen III Image Intensifier for the LIFA

Leutingewolde, The Netherlands - January 9, 2007…The modulated image intensifier (II18MD) of the LIFA widefield FLIM system can be improved in detection efficiency when using the new Gen III intensifier instead of the GenII intensifier. The difference between both intensifiers is the photocathode: a multi-alkali photocathode in the Gen II (QE is 10%), versus the Gallium-Arsenide (GaAs) cathode in the Gen III (QE is 25%). The higher quantum efficiency results in a better signal to noise ratio (S/N) or a shorter exposure time at the same S/N.

The first II18MD unit incorporating the Gen III intensifier shows very promising results. A comparison between the two image intensifiers shows a decrease of 0.7 to 0.8 in the standard deviation of the fluorescence lifetime (both from phase and modulation). With similar signal-to-noise ratios, the exposure time is shorter for the Gen III than the Gen II intensified camera. The Gen III-based image intensifier will offer an advantage in fluorescence lifetime accuracy especially for weak samples.

Tags: FLIM, fluorescence

Confocal Lifetime Images on a Widefield Fluorescence Microscope

Leutingewolde, The Netherlands - Nov. 21, 2006…Lambert Instruments announced today the capabiltiy to obtain confocal lifetime images on a widefield fluorescence microscope using the Lambert LIFA System.

The Lambert LIFA is used together with a fluorescence widefield microscope and a CSU10 spinning disk from Perkin Elmer/Yokogawa. The intensified CCD camera of the LIFA is used as detector by mounting it on the camera port of the CSU10 spinning disk. In this set-up, the light source is not the modulated LED typically used, but instead a modulated 470nm laser diode (PicoQuant). The rest of the set-up uses the standard LIFA components.

Tags: fluorescence, widefield microscope

Lambert FLIM Software Update

Leutingewolde, The Netherlands - Nov. 15, 2006…Lambert Instruments announced today that the FLIM (Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging Microscopy) software available with their LIFA (Lambert Instruments Fluorescence Attachment) has been improved with a number of added features:

Acquisition
• Single frequency measurements.
• Time series: can be triggered from the camera to the control box.
• Multi-frequency measurements: analysis of multiple lifetime components per pixel or ROI.

Analysis
• Profile plot: to observe the lifetime values per line (x or y) of the image.
• Fit-on-point: to check the reliability of the acquisition per pixel.
• Statistics: to analyze the lifetime image per ROI in values/histograms.
• Polar plot: to analyze phase/modulation data of all pixels in one curve.
• Freeform: ROI can be drawn and is moveable through the images.
• Merge: lifetime and intensity images to get better insight of the data in images.

Tags: Fluorescence

White-light TIRF combined with FLIM

Leutingewolde, The Netherlands - August 10, 2006…Lambert Instrument news. TIRF (Total Internal Reflection Fluorescence) microscopy facilitates extremely high-sensitivity and high-contrast visualisation of small spots near the cover glass, without disturbing cellular activity, thereby enabling the tracking of biomolecules, and the study of their dynamic activity and interactions at the molecular level. This new combination of TIRF and frequency domain FLIM makes it possible to measure lifetimes of small adhesion points near the cover glass.

Tags: microscopy, TIRF, FLIM

Frequency Domain Wide-field-FLIM

Leutingewolde, The Netherlands - Sept. 12, 2005…Lambert Instruments has developed a dedicated system that allows image acquisition and generation of lifetime images in a matter of seconds - the Lambert Instruments Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging Attachment (LIFA). The LIFA can be attached to any fluorescence wide-field microscope and the system is fast and highly efficient because excitation and detection are running simultaneously. The system is easy to install and to operate and does not require an optical bench with a laser.

Tags: fluorescence