Des news de Fianium

Source: newsletter Fianium

Eugene, OR - December 3, 2007 - First application of optical supercontinuum lasers in confocal light absorption and scattering spectroscopic (CLASS) microscopy, was reported in a recent publication in Proceedings of the US National Academy of Science by researchers at Harvard Medical School. The experiments were conducted using Fianium's SC450 white light source based on an ultrafast high power fiber laser integrated with photonic crystal fiber.

"CLASS microscopy combines the principles of lightscattering spectroscopy (LSS) with confocal microscopy. LSS is an optical technique that relates the spectroscopic properties of light elastically scattered by small particles to their size, refractive index, and shape. The multispectral nature of LSS enables it to measure internal cell structures much smaller than the diffraction limit without damaging the cell or requiring exogenous markers, which could affect cell function. Canning the confocal volume across the sample creates an image. CLASS microscopy approaches the accuracy of eletron microscopy but is nondestructive and does not require the contrast agents common to optical microscopy. It provides unique capabilities to study functions of viable cells, which are beyond the capabilities of other techniques" - explain researchers from Prof. Lev Perelman's group at Harvard.
Authors of the article also point out that; "System design provides for broadband illumination with either a Xe arc lamp for the measurements performed on extracted organelles in suspension, or a supercontinuum laser (Fianium SC450-2) for the measurements performed on organelles in living cells. The lamp source provides stable, continuous wave operation over a very wide spectral range, whereas the supercontinuum source provides very high brightness, enabling near-real time acquisition of images." Full publication is available for the next four months at http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/104/44/17255.