Re: Spinning Disk Exposure Times (shameless self-promotion)

Posted by Jason Swedlow on
URL: http://confocal-microscopy-list.275.s1.nabble.com/Re-Spinning-Disk-Exposure-Times-shameless-self-promotion-tp593271.html

Search the CONFOCAL archive at http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S1=confocal Dear All,

All modes of light microscopy have their limitations (and advantages, obviously).  We recently reported a comparison of three standard approaches to fluorescence microscopy (WFM, SDCM, and LSCM) where we were aiming to measure achieved SNR for a given light dose (what we referred to as exposure index) with the goal of definitively comparing different modes of microscopy, especially in live fluorescence imaging.  John Murray did a heroic job on this, analysing many different microscope systems across some two years of data collection.  The paper is available here:

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bsc/jms/2007/00000228/00000003/art00015

When we published it, it was open-access, but something has happened-- we'll track that down (darn publishers)!!!!

Anyway, as part of this study, John Murray developed a very nice test sample-- dual color fluorescent beads in a sea of fluorophore of defined concentration-- that can be used to reveal all sorts of interesting sources of error and noise in a digital microscope system (including the artifacts discussed on this thread). 

As Claire said, it pays to pay attention to detail.

Cheers,

Jason

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On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 8:08 PM, Steve Baxter <[hidden email]> wrote:
[Commercial Response]

Hi,

With the CSU / DSU approaches, it is vital to synchronise the exposure time of the camera to a whole number of disk segments. If this is not done then you will see curved scanline artefacts on the image (particularly at short exposure times). The UltraVIEW does this by synchronising the CSU disk speed, the camera exposure and the laser exposure together. This has to be done accurately, any jitter in the camera exposure time or mismatch in the disk speed will result in scanlines appearing again.

If anyone is interested in further technical detail of this, there is some in this PerkinElmer patent:

http://v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=DE60312717T

Cheers,

Steve

On 29 Apr 2008, at 23:09, Farid Jalali wrote:

Search the CONFOCAL archive at http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S1=confocal Thank you Claire for this information. I have reported to Olympus a few times, with images, in the past year and a half or so regarding disk artifacts. I am happily using their Disk Scanning Unit (DSU) on an IX81 frame. Although I rarely get use the spinning disk at such low exposures, even with an EM-CCD, I can actually see the horizontal and vertical slit appertures that make up the Olympus DSU spinning disk. Its made more much more apparent during acquisition by exaggerating the image contrast. After acquisition and 3D deconvolution, the artifact becomes more robust and very obvious when setting thresholds for image segmentation; the disk lines can actually be problematic when trying to segment nuclei for example.  Our disk operates at about 3000rpm, and most of the time its not a problem. Shifting the speed to 5000 rpm only made things worse. I do not think I have been given notice of a fix as yet.


Cheers
Farid

On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 4:24 PM, Claire Brown <[hidden email]> wrote:
Search the CONFOCAL archive at http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S1=confocal
Just a note to those of you using spinning disk confocal microscopes.

I have recently been testing out many different spinning disk confocal
microscopes and one of my worries was artifacts in the images due to

Variable sampling in different pixels due to the spinning nature of the
disk. Most of the commercial companies talk about the importance of making
sure

Your camera and your disk are synchronized. However, what I have found using
a uniform sample (Chroma Technology green fluorescent plastic slide) is that
it is also important to synchronize your exposure time. We found with a disk
spinning at 2500 rpms and an exposure time of 10 ms on an EM-CCD camera we
see lines in the images due to uneven sampling of pixels within the image.
However, if we went with 8, 12 or 16 ms (any multiple of 4 will be on the
same frequency as 2500 rpms or 400 us/spin) these line artifacts disappeared
because our exposure time was in sync with the disk and the camera.


These artifacts are not apparent by eye when a heterogeneous cellular sample
is in place because they are very subtle, but they will certainly be
important for quantitative imaging. So it is very important to use the
appropriate exposure times.


Sincerely,


Claire



_________________________________________________________________
Claire M. Brown, PhD
Life Sciences Complex Imaging Facility Director
McGill University Department of Biochemistry
http://www.lifesciencescomplex.mcgill.ca/imaging




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Farid Jalali MSc
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Dr. Robert Bristow Lab
Applied Molecular Oncology
Princess Margaret Hospital
Toronto, Canada
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416-581-7754 STTARR at MaRS Building
416-581-7791 STTARR Microscopy Suite

Steve Baxter
R&D Leader
Improvision, a PerkinElmer Company
[hidden email]
[hidden email]
+44-2476-692229

Image Processing and Vision Company Limited (trading as Improvision) is a company registered in England and Wales with company number 2505778.  VAT number GB536188722.