Equipment: Principal Microscopy

SmartSPIM, by LifeCanvas Technologies, is our flagship light sheet microscope, capable of imaging large tissue samples with high speed and resolution.

The system offers superior imaging speed while ensuring uniform axial resolution across the entire sample, generating datasets with 1.8 x 1.8 µm pixel size in XY and with 2 µm Z-steps (3.6x, 0.2 NA objective, ~4.5 µm tall PSF). With rapid 3-color acquisition (488, 561, 642 nm laser lines) of your embedded samples it is possible to precisely overlay multiplexed immunofluorescence signals and fluorescent protein expression patterns alike. 4x Fixed zoom. 15x coming soon!

This system can be used with samples that have been cleared using either aqueous (SHIELD, CLARITY, etc) or organic based (iDISCO) clearing methods.

Price: Between $480 - $2,000 US Dollars (depending on sample size) includes clearing and staining of tissue sample. Reach out to jose.maldonado@vanderbilt.edu to learn more.

UltraMicroscope II, by LaVision Biotech, is a Zoom body configuration, single plane illumination microscope ideal for the rapid evaluation of numerous samples — ideal during the process of optimizing your clearing and staining protocols at an accessible price and usage configuration.

The UltraMicroscope II comes with 2×3 light sheets that excite the sample from both sides under slightly different angles. This means the fluorescence excitation is most homogeneous and artifacts like dark areas and stripes are minimized. 0.63x-6.3x variable zoom.

This system can be used with samples cleared using organic solvent based methods (iDISCO).

AxioScan.Z1 with Colibri7, by Zeiss, is a high-throughput slide scanning system. 

Our hardware is equipped with the following:

• Axio Scan.Z1 system unit

• Reflected light FL Axio Scan.Z1

• Reflector turret 10x mot ACR

• Magazine for 100 slides 76x26mm AxioSCAN

• Mounting frame for 4 slides 26x76mm

• Loading tool f/ mount frames f/ 4 slides

• Illuminator Zeiss Colibri.7

• Illumination Adapter HXP/X-Cite

• FL Filter Set 49 DAPI,EX G365 S free

• FL Filter Set 38 HE GFP shift free

• FL Filter Set 43 HE Cy3 shift free

• FL Filter Set 50 Cy5, EX BP640/30 S free

• Reflector Module FL EC P&C

• Calibration Slide Geometric 76x26 mm

• Calibration slide Fluorescence thinlayer

• Calibration slide Color matrix

• Calibration slide Fluorescence standard

• Fluar 5x/0.25 WD=12.5 M27

• Objective PApo 10x/0,45 WD=2.0 M27

• Objective PApo 20x/0.8

• Plan-Apochromat 40x/0.95 Corr D=0.25 M27

• Camera Set Orca Flash 4.0 V3

• Camera Set Hitachi HV-F202 f/ Axio Scan