Dear All, I manage a lab with 3 laser based cell analysis instruments. They include a MoFlo high speed cell sorting cytometer, a Compucyte Laser Scanning Cytometer & a Bio-Rad Confocal Microscope. The confocal runs an optical fibre to deliver its laser light from the laser to the instrument. This seems to becoming more popular with confocal microscope systems. I can see advantages in this type of system for my lab. In a big lab with several machines within a reasonable radius you could have a battery of different lasers & use the optical fibre setup to mix & match across different machines depending on the requirements at the time. Any thoughts? One of the disadvantages is that confocals & scanning cytometers (both use microscopes & slides) tend to use very low MW output lasers (~15 MW), where flow cytometers use much higher output lasers (100 - 300 MW). I understand that another problem is the loss of coherence due to the way light is transmitted along an optical fibre, & a loss of power, as little as 10% of the output of the laser reaches the end of the fibre(?). If the problems could be resolved, it could save on duplicating lasers on each piece of equipment, & mean there was more money for a wider variety of lasers to cover a wider range of applications. Regards Rob W. R. Wadley, B.App.Sc, M.L.S Laboratory Manager Cellular Analysis Facility School of Microbiology & Immunology UNSW, New South Wales, Australia, 2052 Ph (BH) +61 (2) 9385 3517 Ph (AH) +61 (2) 9555 1239 Fax +61 (2) 9385 1591 E-mail r.wadley@unsw.edu.au www http://www.unsw.edu.au/clients/microbiology/CAF.html (Under development)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Apr 03 2002 - 11:53:09 EST