Carl Zeiss will be holding the eleventh “Day of Microscopy”, this time under the motto “Travel to New Dimensions”. Launched in November 2009 in a campaign with the same name, the ELYRA and LSM 780 microscope systems and the VivaTome and DirectFRAP modules will be presented to a large German audience at the Jena Volksbad for the first time. Around 500 users from research, education and clinical routine have registered to experience the innovations from Carl Zeiss live. “The consistently high attendance and the good feedback we received after the event show its value as a forum for gathering information and exchanging experience," said Dr. Ulrich Simon, President and CEO of Carl Zeiss MicroImaging GmbH.

The event is all about super resolution microscopy. “The high resolution and flexibility of ELYRA will enable new approaches and experiments in all disciplines of biomedical research,” Simon explains. “The users are thus enabled to extend their experiments to the examination of cellular components with a size below the diffraction limit. We are confident that this system will allow the scientists to achieve pioneering research results.
The participants in the Day of Microscopy will have the opportunity to become familiar with the systems on site during lectures, workshops and instrument demonstrations.

The two lectures are also about light microscopy beyond the classical resolution limits: Dr. Sebastian Wiesner from Carl Zeiss will talk about the background and the technology behind super resolution. Lecturer Dr. Emil Krause from the Institute of Physiology at the University of Saarland in Homburg, Germany, will explain the latest results from cell research.

The workshops are about learning and using microscopy techniques in practical applications, mainly in combination with the new systems.

The super resolution ELYRA microscope system is based on entirely new operating principles. Its hallmark is the integration of several microscope technologies with very high resolution. Carl Zeiss cooperated with American and German scientists to transfer the state-of-the-art microscopy techniques into a marketable, easy-to-operate instrument. Thanks to the clear resolution of details which could not be visualized by commercially available microscopes in the past, this new system considerably extends the application range of light microscopy.

The LSM 780 is a new member of the family of laser scanning microscopes. Its detection sensitivity is about twice as high as that of previous systems, i.e. it also allows the examination of weakly fluorescent or bleach-sensitive specimens.

The VivaTome imaging module for fluorescence microscopy – designed for development and cell biologists for the examination of living specimens – allows the fast generation of optical sections. With a low level of technical complexity, VivaTome delivers up to 30 images of living cells per second, artifact-free and confocally, that was only possible with highly advanced systems until now.

The DirectFRAP imaging system enables microscope users in cell biology to analyze fast processes in living cells in order to obtain detailed information about diffusion constants of proteins. The system permits the direct photomanipulation of a region of interest in the specimen with laser light and the immediate recording of the subsequent processes.

The extensive exhibition of instrument systems also comprises the Carl Zeiss solution for correlative microscopy in materials analysis. The key elements of the Shuttle&Find interface between the light microscope and the scanning electron microscope are the joint specimen holder and adapter as well as a newly developed software package for fast, automated relocation and examination of one and the same specimen area under both the light and electron microscope.