Carl Zeiss Jena Gmbh

Carl-zeiss-stiftung

F. Hoffmann-la Roche Ag

Carl Zeiss Microimaging Gmbh

Martin Gluch

Robert Grub

Ralf Wolleschensky

Ulrich Simon

Martin Voelcker

Andreas Faulstich

Christof Fattinger

Thilo Enderle

Hansjoerg Tschirky

Martin Volcker

Wolfgang Wormann

Richard Ameling

The use of one or more wavefront modulators in the observation beam path and/or illumination beam path of a microscope provide various advantageous results. Such modulators may be adapted to change the phase and/or the amplitude of light in such a way to carry out displacement and shaping of the focus in the object space and correction of possible aberrations. The possible areas of use include confocal microscopy, laser-assisted microscopy, conventional light microscopy and analytic microscopy.

Applications of adaptive optics in microscopy

A transport system for transporting and handling microtiter plates, for use in high throughput screening, diagnosis and/or combinatorial chemistry, comprising modules with devices for preparing specimens and/or introducing specimens, and/or for optical readout and/or for plate storage and/or devices for further processing steps or readout steps. The system includes an inter-modular transport system for transporting the microtiter plates between the different devices and at least one central transport system for asynchronous plate transfer between individual modules via input and output buffers.

Device for transporting and holding microtiter plates

The invention relates to an ancillary module 7 for making spatially resolved measurements of the focus volume of a light beam focussed by a microscope objective 4. The light beam is especially a laser beam. The invention includes a carrier assembly having a glass plate 8 and sleeves (9, 10) mounted thereon. A piezoelectric scanning tube 12 is held on the sleeves (9, 10) essentially perpendicularly to the glass plate 8. The scanning tube 12 operates to move an optical near-field probe 13a in three mutually perpendicular directions. The optical near-field sensor is preferably a glass fiber 13 which has a tip 13a at one end thereof. This tip 13a scans the laser focus volume. At the other end of the glass fiber 13, either a photodiode 14 is provided with which the light coupled into the glass fiber is detected or a corresponding light detector can be adapted by means of an interface. The two sleeves (9, 10) are displaceable relative to each other for coarsely positioning the scanning tube 12. In addition, position detectors (18a, 18b) for determining the deflection of the piezoelectric scanning tube 12 and luminescent diodes (17a, 17b) for illuminating the fiber tip 13a can be provided. The fiber tip 13a can be illuminated by the luminescent diodes and this tip can be observed for positioning the ancillary module 7 in the viewing field of the microscope 1.

Ancillary module for making a spatially-resolved measurement of a focus

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Jena, Germany

Martin Gluch