Nikon AX confocal microscope
Features
The Nikon AX confocal is also attached to a Nikon Ti2 microscope. It differs however from the A1 in several aspects:
- Increased FOV (diagonally 25mm instead of 18mm)
- Up to 8k x 8k scanning
- Tunable filters for two channels at a time
- A.I. driven algorithms for denoising on the fly
- 6 lasers (405, 440, 488, 514, 561 and 640nm)
- 25x NA 1.05 and 40x NA 1.25 silicone oil objectives for thick tissue scanning
The two tunable channels use sensitive GaAsP detectors. Unlike the A1, it is possible to measure any laser's emission on these two detectors. The AX is also able to do lambda scans with one or several exciting lasers from 400 to 750nm in steps of 40, 20, 10 or 5nm.
In February 2024, an additional NSPARC (Nikon Spatial Array Confocal) detector was added to the AX. Instead of imaging emission intensities pixel by pixel with single PMTs through a pinhole, NSPARC comprises an array of 25 APDs that operate more like an extremely sensitive camera: two-dimensional spatial information from each scanned pixel is collected by the detector. This enables oversampling of the conventional single airy unit emission from the confocal plane. This two-dimensional information is immediately used to obtain ultra-fine structural information, which is lost in conventional detection.
Structures acquired with the normal AX scanning mode compared to the NSPARC detector. Note the better resolution and the lower noise level in the NSPARC image (both images were taken with the same amount of laser excitation and identical dwell times). Click on the image for a larger view.
image: Christian Ackermann
