AW: [CONFOCALMICROSCOPY] Best dual camera CSU-W1 Spinning-Disc solution- problems w CSU-W1

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Dear Kai, dear all

we have a CSU-W1 spinning disk setup provided by Nikon (microscope, autofocus and software) and Andor (EMCCD camera and CSU-W1 unit with Borealis) for more then one year.
All in all we are very satisfied with the performance of the system and the flexibility the Nikon NIS software offers.

However, there are a few technical problems with the CSU-W1 which Andor could not manage to solve until now although we had several visits from engineers and they tried hard.

First, somehow there seems to be some dust inside the SD unit. Although the system has now cleaned and additionally sealed by the engineers, we see after some time dust particles again on the image.

Second, there is quite some lateral shift between two images if we change the dichroics between image acquisition (one camera). This shift is larger then should be expected  - according to Andor - and it is larger if we use the 20x objective and smaller if we acquired the same image with an 100x objective.

Third, we see some kind of weak ghost images: parts of the image structures appear again in other parts of the image but as much weaker structures. We see this with all lasers and filter combinations. The ghost images move in opposite directions if we move the sample. There seem to be some internal reflections the source of this but until now there is no solution to this problem.

It would be very usefull to hear if other places have similar problems with the CSU-W1 unit or if these are problems only with the Andor/Borealis combination? Are there solutions for these problems around?  

Best wishes, Anje

-------------------------------------------------
Dr. Anje Sporbert
Head Advanced Light Microscopy
Technology Platform
Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine Berlin in the Helmholtz Association
Robert-Rössle-Str. 10
13125 Berlin
Germany

Phone: [phone]
http://www.mdc-berlin.de/en/research/core_facilities/

________________________________________
Von: Confocal Microscopy List [[hidden email]]" im Auftrag von "Kai Schleicher [[hidden email]]
Gesendet: Dienstag, 28. November 2017 17:44
An: [hidden email]
Betreff: [CONFOCALMICROSCOPY] Best dual camera CSU-W1 Spinning-Disc solution?

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To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
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Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
*****

Dear list,

our facility is currently looking into whats the "best" high-end CSU-W1 Spinning-Disc solution, namely

1) Andor Dragonfly
2) Nikon CSU-W1
3) Visitron CSU-W1

Besides testing in the field, it would also be ideal for us to learn from people that own one of these systems.

So if you have one of these systems we'd greatly appreciate feedback and how they perform in your lab or facility.

Thanks and cheers,
Kai

[Sylvie Le Guyader]

*****
To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
*****

Hi Antje

Very interesting conversation. We have had a Csu-x1for years and are happy with it but we are looking into buying a W1 so please cc me your answers if you send them offline.

Good luck Antje. Was the Csu sent back to the factory for cleaning or did Andor do it?

Med vänlig hälsning / Best regards

Sylvie

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Sylvie Le Guyader, PhD
Live Cell Imaging Facility Manager

Karolinska Institutet- Bionut Dpt
Hälsovägen 7,
Novum, G lift, floor 6
14157 Huddinge
Sweden

mobile: [phone]
office: [phone]
LCI website

---- [hidden email] wrote ----

*****
To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
*****

Dear Kai, dear all

we have a CSU-W1 spinning disk setup provided by Nikon (microscope, autofocus and software) and Andor (EMCCD camera and CSU-W1 unit with Borealis) for more then one year.
All in all we are very satisfied with the performance of the system and the flexibility the Nikon NIS software offers.

However, there are a few technical problems with the CSU-W1 which Andor could not manage to solve until now although we had several visits from engineers and they tried hard.

First, somehow there seems to be some dust inside the SD unit. Although the system has now cleaned and additionally sealed by the engineers, we see after some time dust particles again on the image.

Second, there is quite some lateral shift between two images if we change the dichroics between image acquisition (one camera). This shift is larger then should be expected  - according to Andor - and it is larger if we use the 20x objective and smaller if we acquired the same image with an 100x objective.

Third, we see some kind of weak ghost images: parts of the image structures appear again in other parts of the image but as much weaker structures. We see this with all lasers and filter combinations. The ghost images move in opposite directions if we move the sample. There seem to be some internal reflections the source of this but until now there is no solution to this problem.

It would be very usefull to hear if other places have similar problems with the CSU-W1 unit or if these are problems only with the Andor/Borealis combination? Are there solutions for these problems around?

Best wishes, Anje

-------------------------------------------------
Dr. Anje Sporbert
Head Advanced Light Microscopy
Technology Platform
Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine Berlin in the Helmholtz Association
Robert-Rössle-Str. 10
13125 Berlin
Germany

Phone: [phone]
http://www.mdc-berlin.de/en/research/core_facilities/

________________________________________
Von: Confocal Microscopy List [[hidden email]]" im Auftrag von "Kai Schleicher [[hidden email]]
Gesendet: Dienstag, 28. November 2017 17:44
An: [hidden email]
Betreff: [CONFOCALMICROSCOPY] Best dual camera CSU-W1 Spinning-Disc solution?

*****
To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
*****

Dear list,

our facility is currently looking into whats the "best" high-end CSU-W1 Spinning-Disc solution, namely

1) Andor Dragonfly
2) Nikon CSU-W1
3) Visitron CSU-W1

Besides testing in the field, it would also be ideal for us to learn from people that own one of these systems.

So if you have one of these systems we'd greatly appreciate feedback and how they perform in your lab or facility.

Thanks and cheers,
Kai

[jerie]

*****
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*****

Lister,

I recently visited my former facility home at the FMI in Basel, there they
run a new fully corrected dualcam W1 which became the workhorse for their
users, stealing business from their single beam confocals and producing
lots of excellent data for various projects.

I suggest to contact Laurent Gelman and his team discuss the issue.

Kind regards, Jens

Dr. Jens Rietdorf,

Since Sep 1st, 2017: Customer Success Manager, Thermo Fisher -legacy FEI-
The Netherlands.

2013-2017 Visiting scientist @ center for technological development in
health CDTS, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation Fiocruz, Rio de Janeiro Brasil.


On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 8:22 AM, Sylvie Le Guyader <[hidden email]>
wrote:

> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
> Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
> *****
>
> Hi Antje
>
> Very interesting conversation. We have had a Csu-x1for years and are happy
> with it but we are looking into buying a W1 so please cc me your answers if
> you send them offline.
>
> Good luck Antje. Was the Csu sent back to the factory for cleaning or did
> Andor do it?
>
> Med vänlig hälsning / Best regards
>
> Sylvie
>
> @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
>
> Sylvie Le Guyader, PhD
> Live Cell Imaging Facility Manager
>
> Karolinska Institutet- Bionut Dpt
> Hälsovägen 7,
> Novum, G lift, floor 6
> 14157 Huddinge
> Sweden
>
> mobile: [phone]
> office: [phone]
> LCI website
>
> ---- [hidden email] wrote ----
>
> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
> Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
> *****
>
> Dear Kai, dear all
>
> we have a CSU-W1 spinning disk setup provided by Nikon (microscope,
> autofocus and software) and Andor (EMCCD camera and CSU-W1 unit with
> Borealis) for more then one year.
> All in all we are very satisfied with the performance of the system and
> the flexibility the Nikon NIS software offers.
>
> However, there are a few technical problems with the CSU-W1 which Andor
> could not manage to solve until now although we had several visits from
> engineers and they tried hard.
>
> First, somehow there seems to be some dust inside the SD unit. Although
> the system has now cleaned and additionally sealed by the engineers, we see
> after some time dust particles again on the image.
>
> Second, there is quite some lateral shift between two images if we change
> the dichroics between image acquisition (one camera). This shift is larger
> then should be expected  - according to Andor - and it is larger if we use
> the 20x objective and smaller if we acquired the same image with an 100x
> objective.
>
> Third, we see some kind of weak ghost images: parts of the image
> structures appear again in other parts of the image but as much weaker
> structures. We see this with all lasers and filter combinations. The ghost
> images move in opposite directions if we move the sample. There seem to be
> some internal reflections the source of this but until now there is no
> solution to this problem.
>
> It would be very usefull to hear if other places have similar problems
> with the CSU-W1 unit or if these are problems only with the Andor/Borealis
> combination? Are there solutions for these problems around?
>
> Best wishes, Anje
>
> -------------------------------------------------
> Dr. Anje Sporbert
> Head Advanced Light Microscopy
> Technology Platform
> Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine Berlin in the Helmholtz
> Association
> Robert-Rössle-Str. 10
> 13125 Berlin
> Germany
>
> Phone: [phone]
> http://www.mdc-berlin.de/en/research/core_facilities/
>
> ________________________________________
> Von: Confocal Microscopy List [[hidden email]]&quot; im
> Auftrag von &quot;Kai Schleicher [[hidden email]]
> Gesendet: Dienstag, 28. November 2017 17:44
> An: [hidden email]
> Betreff: [CONFOCALMICROSCOPY] Best dual camera CSU-W1 Spinning-Disc
> solution?
>
> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
> Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
> *****
>
> Dear list,
>
> our facility is currently looking into whats the "best" high-end CSU-W1
> Spinning-Disc solution, namely
>
> 1) Andor Dragonfly
> 2) Nikon CSU-W1
> 3) Visitron CSU-W1
>
> Besides testing in the field, it would also be ideal for us to learn from
> people that own one of these systems.
>
> So if you have one of these systems we'd greatly appreciate feedback and
> how they perform in your lab or facility.
>
> Thanks and cheers,
> Kai
>

[lgelman]

*****
To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
*****

Hi Kai,

We have been using a CSU-W1 with "Homogenizer" from Visitron for the last 2 years, and are extremely happy with it. Actually, that's now the most used system on our facility, before all LSMs, slide scanners, and HCS systems. The head is mounted on an Axio Imager, has 2 disks, 2 PCO sCMOS cameras, 4 lasers. We do a lot of tile imaging on fixed thick brain sections and live C. elegans time-lapse imaging and thanks to the homogenizer we have shading free images which look very pretty after stitching and for quantification.

We had also some dust after a few months on both disks, and Visitron came to clean them. That's a very tricky operation, and we were lucky it went very well. In the meantime, we got again a very small dust particle on one of the disks, but it fluoresces marginally and "disappears" as soon as there is some signal from the sample.

We decided to buy a second CSU-W1 at Visitron with dual-disk system, which is being installed this week. It is mounted on a Ti-2, hopefully we won't see the reflections Antje sees on her system. We also bought the homogenizer to get shading-free images and we have there a Andor Ultra 888 EMCCD and a PCO sCMOS, 6 lasers, Nikon PFS. That system is obviously dedicated to live cell imaging, when the first one is more used for fixed samples.

Five years ago, we also implemented a Borealis system on one of our X1 scan-heads. We are still very happy with it.

I think all three systems (Visitron, Nikon, Andor) perform well. I tested the Dragonfly, got less good test images than on our W1, but I think the Andor engineer in charge of the tests did not take the images properly, so I could not make a definite statement here. However, when I tested 4 years ago the "ancestor" of the dragonfly, the Diskovery from Spectral Applied Research (bought by Andor), it was performing extremely well for a spinning-disk with no micro-lenses (at the time, Yokogawa patent was still running).

The reason we bought at Visitron is that we have already 4 big systems running with Visiview. It is not bug-free (which microscope software is?) but our users like it, are trained for it, and we particularly appreciate the possibility to develop macros with python scripting, which we do abundantly. Nikon offers also the possibility to develop customized workflows, we have just no experience. Both Visitron and Nikon provide, in my experience and from what I hear, excellent support in Switzerland. To say it friendly, I was not impressed by the kindness and willingness to help of Andor after the few interactions I had so far... Their software is also new, and although it seems to develop fast, you may want to check you have all options for all the fancy or intelligent imaging you need to do. Also, obviously, if you buy at Nikon (and at Andor?) you will have a Nikon scope. We have Zeiss, Olympus and Nikon scopes and all perform well, just for some applications one manufacturer offers special objectives that might be instrumental for a given application. You may take this into consideration as well.

Good luck !

Cheers,

Laurent.

-----Original Message-----
From: Confocal Microscopy List [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of jens rietdorf
Sent: Wednesday, December 6, 2017 10:05
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: AW: [CONFOCALMICROSCOPY] Best dual camera CSU-W1 Spinning-Disc solution- problems w CSU-W1

*****
To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
*****

Lister,

I recently visited my former facility home at the FMI in Basel, there they run a new fully corrected dualcam W1 which became the workhorse for their users, stealing business from their single beam confocals and producing lots of excellent data for various projects.

I suggest to contact Laurent Gelman and his team discuss the issue.

Kind regards, Jens

Dr. Jens Rietdorf,

Since Sep 1st, 2017: Customer Success Manager, Thermo Fisher -legacy FEI- The Netherlands.

2013-2017 Visiting scientist @ center for technological development in health CDTS, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation Fiocruz, Rio de Janeiro Brasil.


On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 8:22 AM, Sylvie Le Guyader <[hidden email]>
wrote:

> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
> Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
> *****
>
> Hi Antje
>
> Very interesting conversation. We have had a Csu-x1for years and are
> happy with it but we are looking into buying a W1 so please cc me your
> answers if you send them offline.
>
> Good luck Antje. Was the Csu sent back to the factory for cleaning or
> did Andor do it?
>
> Med vänlig hälsning / Best regards
>
> Sylvie
>
> @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
>
> Sylvie Le Guyader, PhD
> Live Cell Imaging Facility Manager
>
> Karolinska Institutet- Bionut Dpt
> Hälsovägen 7,
> Novum, G lift, floor 6
> 14157 Huddinge
> Sweden
>
> mobile: [phone]
> office: [phone]
> LCI website
>
> ---- [hidden email] wrote ----
>
> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
> Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
> *****
>
> Dear Kai, dear all
>
> we have a CSU-W1 spinning disk setup provided by Nikon (microscope,
> autofocus and software) and Andor (EMCCD camera and CSU-W1 unit with
> Borealis) for more then one year.
> All in all we are very satisfied with the performance of the system
> and the flexibility the Nikon NIS software offers.
>
> However, there are a few technical problems with the CSU-W1 which
> Andor could not manage to solve until now although we had several
> visits from engineers and they tried hard.
>
> First, somehow there seems to be some dust inside the SD unit.
> Although the system has now cleaned and additionally sealed by the
> engineers, we see after some time dust particles again on the image.
>
> Second, there is quite some lateral shift between two images if we
> change the dichroics between image acquisition (one camera). This
> shift is larger then should be expected  - according to Andor - and it
> is larger if we use the 20x objective and smaller if we acquired the
> same image with an 100x objective.
>
> Third, we see some kind of weak ghost images: parts of the image
> structures appear again in other parts of the image but as much weaker
> structures. We see this with all lasers and filter combinations. The
> ghost images move in opposite directions if we move the sample. There
> seem to be some internal reflections the source of this but until now
> there is no solution to this problem.
>
> It would be very usefull to hear if other places have similar problems
> with the CSU-W1 unit or if these are problems only with the
> Andor/Borealis combination? Are there solutions for these problems around?
>
> Best wishes, Anje
>
> -------------------------------------------------
> Dr. Anje Sporbert
> Head Advanced Light Microscopy
> Technology Platform
> Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine Berlin in the Helmholtz
> Association Robert-Rössle-Str. 10
> 13125 Berlin
> Germany
>
> Phone: [phone]
> http://www.mdc-berlin.de/en/research/core_facilities/
>
> ________________________________________
> Von: Confocal Microscopy List [[hidden email]]&quot;
> im Auftrag von &quot;Kai Schleicher [[hidden email]]
> Gesendet: Dienstag, 28. November 2017 17:44
> An: [hidden email]
> Betreff: [CONFOCALMICROSCOPY] Best dual camera CSU-W1 Spinning-Disc
> solution?
>
> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
> Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
> *****
>
> Dear list,
>
> our facility is currently looking into whats the "best" high-end
> CSU-W1 Spinning-Disc solution, namely
>
> 1) Andor Dragonfly
> 2) Nikon CSU-W1
> 3) Visitron CSU-W1
>
> Besides testing in the field, it would also be ideal for us to learn
> from people that own one of these systems.
>
> So if you have one of these systems we'd greatly appreciate feedback
> and how they perform in your lab or facility.
>
> Thanks and cheers,
> Kai
>

[Sylvie Le Guyader]

*****
To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
*****

Hi Laurent

Do you know how the homogenizer work? Is it a piece of hardware?

Med vänlig hälsning / Best regards

Sylvie

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Sylvie Le Guyader, PhD
Live Cell Imaging Facility Manager

Karolinska Institutet- Bionut Dpt
Hälsovägen 7,
Novum, G lift, floor 6
14157<tel:14157> Huddinge
Sweden

mobile: [phone]<tel:+46%20(0)%2073%20733%205008>
office: [phone]<tel:+46%20(0)%208%20524%20811%2072>
LCI website

---- Gelman, Laurent wrote ----

*****
To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
*****

Hi Kai,

We have been using a CSU-W1 with "Homogenizer" from Visitron for the last 2 years, and are extremely happy with it. Actually, that's now the most used system on our facility, before all LSMs, slide scanners, and HCS systems. The head is mounted on an Axio Imager, has 2 disks, 2 PCO sCMOS cameras, 4 lasers. We do a lot of tile imaging on fixed thick brain sections and live C. elegans time-lapse imaging and thanks to the homogenizer we have shading free images which look very pretty after stitching and for quantification.

We had also some dust after a few months on both disks, and Visitron came to clean them. That's a very tricky operation, and we were lucky it went very well. In the meantime, we got again a very small dust particle on one of the disks, but it fluoresces marginally and "disappears" as soon as there is some signal from the sample.

We decided to buy a second CSU-W1 at Visitron with dual-disk system, which is being installed this week. It is mounted on a Ti-2, hopefully we won't see the reflections Antje sees on her system. We also bought the homogenizer to get shading-free images and we have there a Andor Ultra 888 EMCCD and a PCO sCMOS, 6 lasers, Nikon PFS. That system is obviously dedicated to live cell imaging, when the first one is more used for fixed samples.

Five years ago, we also implemented a Borealis system on one of our X1 scan-heads. We are still very happy with it.

I think all three systems (Visitron, Nikon, Andor) perform well. I tested the Dragonfly, got less good test images than on our W1, but I think the Andor engineer in charge of the tests did not take the images properly, so I could not make a definite statement here. However, when I tested 4 years ago the "ancestor" of the dragonfly, the Diskovery from Spectral Applied Research (bought by Andor), it was performing extremely well for a spinning-disk with no micro-lenses (at the time, Yokogawa patent was still running).

The reason we bought at Visitron is that we have already 4 big systems running with Visiview. It is not bug-free (which microscope software is?) but our users like it, are trained for it, and we particularly appreciate the possibility to develop macros with python scripting, which we do abundantly. Nikon offers also the possibility to develop customized workflows, we have just no experience. Both Visitron and Nikon provide, in my experience and from what I hear, excellent support in Switzerland. To say it friendly, I was not impressed by the kindness and willingness to help of Andor after the few interactions I had so far... Their software is also new, and although it seems to develop fast, you may want to check you have all options for all the fancy or intelligent imaging you need to do. Also, obviously, if you buy at Nikon (and at Andor?) you will have a Nikon scope. We have Zeiss, Olympus and Nikon scopes and all perform well, just for some applications one manufacturer offers special objectives that might be instrumental for a given application. You may take this into consideration as well.

Good luck !

Cheers,

Laurent.

-----Original Message-----
From: Confocal Microscopy List [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of jens rietdorf
Sent: Wednesday, December 6, 2017 10:05
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: AW: [CONFOCALMICROSCOPY] Best dual camera CSU-W1 Spinning-Disc solution- problems w CSU-W1

*****
To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
*****

Lister,

I recently visited my former facility home at the FMI in Basel, there they run a new fully corrected dualcam W1 which became the workhorse for their users, stealing business from their single beam confocals and producing lots of excellent data for various projects.

I suggest to contact Laurent Gelman and his team discuss the issue.

Kind regards, Jens

Dr. Jens Rietdorf,

Since Sep 1st, 2017: Customer Success Manager, Thermo Fisher -legacy FEI- The Netherlands.

2013-2017 Visiting scientist @ center for technological development in health CDTS, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation Fiocruz, Rio de Janeiro Brasil.


On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 8:22 AM, Sylvie Le Guyader <[hidden email]>
wrote:

> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
> Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
> *****
>
> Hi Antje
>
> Very interesting conversation. We have had a Csu-x1for years and are
> happy with it but we are looking into buying a W1 so please cc me your
> answers if you send them offline.
>
> Good luck Antje. Was the Csu sent back to the factory for cleaning or
> did Andor do it?
>
> Med vänlig hälsning / Best regards
>
> Sylvie
>
> @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
>
> Sylvie Le Guyader, PhD
> Live Cell Imaging Facility Manager
>
> Karolinska Institutet- Bionut Dpt
> Hälsovägen 7,
> Novum, G lift, floor 6
> 14157 Huddinge
> Sweden
>
> mobile: [phone]
> office: [phone]
> LCI website
>
> ---- [hidden email] wrote ----
>
> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
> Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
> *****
>
> Dear Kai, dear all
>
> we have a CSU-W1 spinning disk setup provided by Nikon (microscope,
> autofocus and software) and Andor (EMCCD camera and CSU-W1 unit with
> Borealis) for more then one year.
> All in all we are very satisfied with the performance of the system
> and the flexibility the Nikon NIS software offers.
>
> However, there are a few technical problems with the CSU-W1 which
> Andor could not manage to solve until now although we had several
> visits from engineers and they tried hard.
>
> First, somehow there seems to be some dust inside the SD unit.
> Although the system has now cleaned and additionally sealed by the
> engineers, we see after some time dust particles again on the image.
>
> Second, there is quite some lateral shift between two images if we
> change the dichroics between image acquisition (one camera). This
> shift is larger then should be expected  - according to Andor - and it
> is larger if we use the 20x objective and smaller if we acquired the
> same image with an 100x objective.
>
> Third, we see some kind of weak ghost images: parts of the image
> structures appear again in other parts of the image but as much weaker
> structures. We see this with all lasers and filter combinations. The
> ghost images move in opposite directions if we move the sample. There
> seem to be some internal reflections the source of this but until now
> there is no solution to this problem.
>
> It would be very usefull to hear if other places have similar problems
> with the CSU-W1 unit or if these are problems only with the
> Andor/Borealis combination? Are there solutions for these problems around?
>
> Best wishes, Anje
>
> -------------------------------------------------
> Dr. Anje Sporbert
> Head Advanced Light Microscopy
> Technology Platform
> Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine Berlin in the Helmholtz
> Association Robert-Rössle-Str. 10
> 13125 Berlin
> Germany
>
> Phone: [phone]
> http://www.mdc-berlin.de/en/research/core_facilities/
>
> ________________________________________
> Von: Confocal Microscopy List [[hidden email]]&quot;
> im Auftrag von &quot;Kai Schleicher [[hidden email]]
> Gesendet: Dienstag, 28. November 2017 17:44
> An: [hidden email]
> Betreff: [CONFOCALMICROSCOPY] Best dual camera CSU-W1 Spinning-Disc
> solution?
>
> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
> Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
> *****
>
> Dear list,
>
> our facility is currently looking into whats the "best" high-end
> CSU-W1 Spinning-Disc solution, namely
>
> 1) Andor Dragonfly
> 2) Nikon CSU-W1
> 3) Visitron CSU-W1
>
> Besides testing in the field, it would also be ideal for us to learn
> from people that own one of these systems.
>
> So if you have one of these systems we'd greatly appreciate feedback
> and how they perform in your lab or facility.
>
> Thanks and cheers,
> Kai
>

[lgelman]

*****
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*****

Hi Sylvie,

It is indeed a piece of hardware mounted directly on the scan-head (outside).
The explanation I got from Visitron is that it is basically a series of lenses that shape the laser beam in a manner that you get more power on the sides than in the center of the beam, balancing out the lost in the optical system.

Best regards,

Laurent.

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Confocal Microscopy List [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Sylvie Le Guyader
Sent: Wednesday, December 13, 2017 18:19
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: AW: [CONFOCALMICROSCOPY] Best dual camera CSU-W1 Spinning-Disc solution- problems w CSU-W1

*****
To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
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Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
*****

Hi Laurent

Do you know how the homogenizer work? Is it a piece of hardware?

Med vänlig hälsning / Best regards

Sylvie

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Sylvie Le Guyader, PhD
Live Cell Imaging Facility Manager

Karolinska Institutet- Bionut Dpt
Hälsovägen 7,
Novum, G lift, floor 6
14157<tel:14157> Huddinge
Sweden

mobile: [phone]<tel:+46%20(0)%2073%20733%205008>
office: [phone]<tel:+46%20(0)%208%20524%20811%2072>
LCI website

---- Gelman, Laurent wrote ----

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*****

Hi Kai,

We have been using a CSU-W1 with "Homogenizer" from Visitron for the last 2 years, and are extremely happy with it. Actually, that's now the most used system on our facility, before all LSMs, slide scanners, and HCS systems. The head is mounted on an Axio Imager, has 2 disks, 2 PCO sCMOS cameras, 4 lasers. We do a lot of tile imaging on fixed thick brain sections and live C. elegans time-lapse imaging and thanks to the homogenizer we have shading free images which look very pretty after stitching and for quantification.

We had also some dust after a few months on both disks, and Visitron came to clean them. That's a very tricky operation, and we were lucky it went very well. In the meantime, we got again a very small dust particle on one of the disks, but it fluoresces marginally and "disappears" as soon as there is some signal from the sample.

We decided to buy a second CSU-W1 at Visitron with dual-disk system, which is being installed this week. It is mounted on a Ti-2, hopefully we won't see the reflections Antje sees on her system. We also bought the homogenizer to get shading-free images and we have there a Andor Ultra 888 EMCCD and a PCO sCMOS, 6 lasers, Nikon PFS. That system is obviously dedicated to live cell imaging, when the first one is more used for fixed samples.

Five years ago, we also implemented a Borealis system on one of our X1 scan-heads. We are still very happy with it.

I think all three systems (Visitron, Nikon, Andor) perform well. I tested the Dragonfly, got less good test images than on our W1, but I think the Andor engineer in charge of the tests did not take the images properly, so I could not make a definite statement here. However, when I tested 4 years ago the "ancestor" of the dragonfly, the Diskovery from Spectral Applied Research (bought by Andor), it was performing extremely well for a spinning-disk with no micro-lenses (at the time, Yokogawa patent was still running).

The reason we bought at Visitron is that we have already 4 big systems running with Visiview. It is not bug-free (which microscope software is?) but our users like it, are trained for it, and we particularly appreciate the possibility to develop macros with python scripting, which we do abundantly. Nikon offers also the possibility to develop customized workflows, we have just no experience. Both Visitron and Nikon provide, in my experience and from what I hear, excellent support in Switzerland. To say it friendly, I was not impressed by the kindness and willingness to help of Andor after the few interactions I had so far... Their software is also new, and although it seems to develop fast, you may want to check you have all options for all the fancy or intelligent imaging you need to do. Also, obviously, if you buy at Nikon (and at Andor?) you will have a Nikon scope. We have Zeiss, Olympus and Nikon scopes and all perform well, just for some applications one manufacturer offers special objectives that might be instrumental for a given application. You may take this into consideration as well.

Good luck !

Cheers,

Laurent.

-----Original Message-----
From: Confocal Microscopy List [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of jens rietdorf
Sent: Wednesday, December 6, 2017 10:05
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: AW: [CONFOCALMICROSCOPY] Best dual camera CSU-W1 Spinning-Disc solution- problems w CSU-W1

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To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
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Lister,

I recently visited my former facility home at the FMI in Basel, there they run a new fully corrected dualcam W1 which became the workhorse for their users, stealing business from their single beam confocals and producing lots of excellent data for various projects.

I suggest to contact Laurent Gelman and his team discuss the issue.

Kind regards, Jens

Dr. Jens Rietdorf,

Since Sep 1st, 2017: Customer Success Manager, Thermo Fisher -legacy FEI- The Netherlands.

2013-2017 Visiting scientist @ center for technological development in health CDTS, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation Fiocruz, Rio de Janeiro Brasil.


On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 8:22 AM, Sylvie Le Guyader <[hidden email]>
wrote:

> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
> Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
> *****
>
> Hi Antje
>
> Very interesting conversation. We have had a Csu-x1for years and are
> happy with it but we are looking into buying a W1 so please cc me your
> answers if you send them offline.
>
> Good luck Antje. Was the Csu sent back to the factory for cleaning or
> did Andor do it?
>
> Med vänlig hälsning / Best regards
>
> Sylvie
>
> @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
>
> Sylvie Le Guyader, PhD
> Live Cell Imaging Facility Manager
>
> Karolinska Institutet- Bionut Dpt
> Hälsovägen 7,
> Novum, G lift, floor 6
> 14157 Huddinge
> Sweden
>
> mobile: [phone]
> office: [phone]
> LCI website
>
> ---- [hidden email] wrote ----
>
> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
> Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
> *****
>
> Dear Kai, dear all
>
> we have a CSU-W1 spinning disk setup provided by Nikon (microscope,
> autofocus and software) and Andor (EMCCD camera and CSU-W1 unit with
> Borealis) for more then one year.
> All in all we are very satisfied with the performance of the system
> and the flexibility the Nikon NIS software offers.
>
> However, there are a few technical problems with the CSU-W1 which
> Andor could not manage to solve until now although we had several
> visits from engineers and they tried hard.
>
> First, somehow there seems to be some dust inside the SD unit.
> Although the system has now cleaned and additionally sealed by the
> engineers, we see after some time dust particles again on the image.
>
> Second, there is quite some lateral shift between two images if we
> change the dichroics between image acquisition (one camera). This
> shift is larger then should be expected  - according to Andor - and it
> is larger if we use the 20x objective and smaller if we acquired the
> same image with an 100x objective.
>
> Third, we see some kind of weak ghost images: parts of the image
> structures appear again in other parts of the image but as much weaker
> structures. We see this with all lasers and filter combinations. The
> ghost images move in opposite directions if we move the sample. There
> seem to be some internal reflections the source of this but until now
> there is no solution to this problem.
>
> It would be very usefull to hear if other places have similar problems
> with the CSU-W1 unit or if these are problems only with the
> Andor/Borealis combination? Are there solutions for these problems around?
>
> Best wishes, Anje
>
> -------------------------------------------------
> Dr. Anje Sporbert
> Head Advanced Light Microscopy
> Technology Platform
> Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine Berlin in the Helmholtz
> Association Robert-Rössle-Str. 10
> 13125 Berlin
> Germany
>
> Phone: [phone]
> http://www.mdc-berlin.de/en/research/core_facilities/
>
> ________________________________________
> Von: Confocal Microscopy List [[hidden email]]&quot;
> im Auftrag von &quot;Kai Schleicher [[hidden email]]
> Gesendet: Dienstag, 28. November 2017 17:44
> An: [hidden email]
> Betreff: [CONFOCALMICROSCOPY] Best dual camera CSU-W1 Spinning-Disc
> solution?
>
> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
> Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
> *****
>
> Dear list,
>
> our facility is currently looking into whats the "best" high-end
> CSU-W1 Spinning-Disc solution, namely
>
> 1) Andor Dragonfly
> 2) Nikon CSU-W1
> 3) Visitron CSU-W1
>
> Besides testing in the field, it would also be ideal for us to learn
> from people that own one of these systems.
>
> So if you have one of these systems we'd greatly appreciate feedback
> and how they perform in your lab or facility.
>
> Thanks and cheers,
> Kai
>