Confocal Microscopy List

Optical Coupling Gels

Posted by Cameron Nowell on Mar 22, 2009; 10:37pm
URL: http://confocal-microscopy-list.275.s1.nabble.com/Optical-Coupling-Gels-tp2518597.html

Hi List,

Has anyone had any experience in using optical gels? We are looking at imaging lymphatic vessels in a mouse tail (still attached to a live mouse) and eventually lymph nodes with our two photon system. The scope is fitted with a 20x water immersion lens (NA 0.95) but we don’t want to submerge the whole tissue. So ideally we need a thick gel that has the same RI of water and won’t damage the objective.

I found one paper (Rothstein et al.) that use sorbitol gelled with carbomer 940 to create a gel with a refractive index similar to water. Is there any other gels that anyone has used before? I was thinking of acrlyamide (polymerised) but cannot find the RI of it.

Cheers

Cam

Cameron J. Nowell
Microscopy Manager
Centre for Advanced Microscopy
Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research
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