Re: Uniformity of 2-photon illumination?

Posted by George McNamara on
URL: http://confocal-microscopy-list.275.s1.nabble.com/Uniformity-of-2-photon-illumination-tp6719119p6723997.html

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Hi Guy,

A laminated business card may be a different story.

Coherent set up a Chameleon Ultra II Compact OPO in my lab for several
days in early August (thanks again to Scott Crane and Ricky Skillings!).
They were visiting because we are including an OPO-Vis in our Leica STED
grant proposal (the CW-STED demo is going nicely, except for CW's
limited STEDable colors, 5x advantage of pulsing over CW for depletion,
advantage of time gating by pulsed excitation, and ~2 hours if
vibrations some days - my  core is on the 6th floor and the demo
vibration isolation table has skinny legs).

The Chameleon OPO peak (avg) power was 4.8 Watts at 800 nm. The Rimke
FOM 2011 abstract from APE and Coherent shows complete power curves for
the standard Chameleon OPO-Vis outputs
http://www.focusonmicroscopy.org/2011/PDF/422_Rimke.pdf   (for extra
money the idler beam can also be exported ... this is ~1700 nm to 4000
nm, so not clear if it has any use or how we would get it into a useful
wavelength range).

Enjoy and be safe,

Sincerely,

George


On 8/25/2011 4:35 AM, Guy Cox wrote:

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> This is a bit over the top.  Paper does not give a specular reflection,
> it is just illuminated by the laser.  That is most unlikely to be
> hazardous (except that you might set the paper on fire). And 3W is more
> than you are likely to get - our old Verdi-Mira would give about 700mW
> at peak, and if you tuned it to 700nm so that you could see it the power
> was far less than this.  What you need to be careful about is glass
> elements which can give a specular reflection.  In the end there is no
> substitute for common sense.
>
>                                                         Guy
>
> Optical Imaging Techniques in Cell Biology
> by Guy Cox    CRC Press / Taylor&  Francis
>       http://www.guycox.com/optical.htm
> ______________________________________________
> Associate Professor Guy Cox, MA, DPhil(Oxon)
> Australian Centre for Microscopy&  Microanalysis,
> Madsen Building F09, University of Sydney, NSW 2006
>
> Phone +61 2 9351 3176     Fax +61 2 9351 7682
>               Mobile 0413 281 861
> ______________________________________________
>        http://www.guycox.net
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Confocal Microscopy List [mailto:[hidden email]]
> On Behalf Of Zac Arrac Atelaz
> Sent: Thursday, 25 August 2011 2:06 PM
> To: [hidden email]
> Subject: Re: Uniformity of 2-photon illumination?
>
> *****
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>
>
> Laser users:
>
> Please, anyone trying to align lasers, consider first
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_safety this is basic, in all the
> older  2-P systems you have the highest classification of danger from a
> laser, that is class IV!!! even reflection from paper can be terribly
> dangerous, when installing those systems a interlock is a must so if
> anyone opens the door while working, the laser beam is blocked or shut
> down, you will notice that the peak power of the system is almost 3W,
> but when pulsed this can go over the roof, the peak power can reach in
> some models up to 380,000W, 10% of that is quite a bunch.
>
> So if you remember that paper reflectance can go from 50 to 90%, you can
> picture that its not safe at all putting a piece of paper following
> laser paths, as you can get half or almost all the laser going in
> unknown angles around the room
>
> http://www.laserfx.com/BasicSafety/BasicSafety2.html
>
> Going trough numbers we have this:
>
> Safe exposure = 2.5mW /cm2
> 1W trough your eye = 100,000W /cm2
>
> Placing there the piece of paper in the way you will still have half of
> this energy going in the angle that your hand is giving to the paper,
> with the pulsed laser you will have a quadrillion of laser hits by
> second
>
> So believe me is safer and easier having the interlock activated, and
> being reaaaally careful about this devices, by the way there is only one
> 2-P or MP microscope in the market that after installed goes down in
> laser safety requirements, you can be trained to align lasers, but is a
> really precise and dangerous task.
>
> Best regards
>
> Gabriel OH
>
>
>
>
>
>    
>> Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2011 10:20:20 -0700
>> From: [hidden email]
>> Subject: Re: Uniformity of 2-photon illumination?
>> To: [hidden email]
>>
>> *****
>> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
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>> *****
>>
>> We align our 2-P laser every few weeks or months, as needed. If your
>>      
> system is similar to ours, you should have your 2-P bean steered from
> the laser to the scanner through two mirrors, one near the laser beam
> source, and one near the scanner. If you have a fiber, then the
> following does not apply. If you remove the protective plastic covers
> over the mirros, you will see the mirrors, along with their adjustment
> screws. The way we do it is to run a continuous scan with a fluorescent
> slide, and then slightly tweak the adjustment screws, optimizing for
> intensity and uniformity of the image on the screen. You can use
> linescan / line profile if you want to be more precise. Start with the
> adjustment screws near the scanner. You should be careful to do very
> small adjustments, so that you don't loose the laser beam completely,
> because then it gets a bit more complicated, but if you just tweak each
> screw one way and the other, and repeat a few times for all the screws,
> you should be able to get good uniform illumination. This works if the
> laser is pretty aligned overall, but just needs a little adjustment
> (which seems to be your case). Attenuate your laser before you do this
> (you should need less than 10% to get an image), wear protective
> glasses, and watch out for reflective objects (jewelry, etc, ) that
> might bounce the laser beam into your retina. Put warning signs, and/or
> keep people out of the room while you are doing this.
>    
>> If you can't get bright, even illumination with this method, you may
>>      
> need more serious intervention. One trick we use is to use a visible
> laser, such as the 488 line, as a reference for what the ideal light
> path should be. Use a mirror slide to bounce the 488 back into the
> objective and along the 2-P light path (I guess you would need an 80/20
> dichroic, so that some of the 488 power goes through). You can see the
> 488 beam with a piece of paper as it follows the 2-P path. The trick
> then is to get the 2-P beam to follow the same path, starting near the
> scanner and working your way back to the 2-P laser source. This is quite
> tricky, and it's quite easy to make things worse, so I don't recommend
> it unless you know your 2P beam is way off. I used this method once when
> our 2P beam had been completely lost and we couldn't even get an image
> on the screen. I did this long ago, so I can't guarantee all the
> details, but you should get the idea. Calling a service person might
> also be a good alternative in this case.
>    
>> Again, be very careful. I once burned a hole through a piece of paper
>>      
> (and burned my finger), because I had the 2P at high power and was being
> a bit casual with it. Burning your finger is not a big deal (it will
> hurt before you do serious damage to it), but your eye (or someone
> else's) is a different story...
>    
>> --
>> Julio Vazquez
>> Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
>> Seattle, WA 98109-1024
>>
>> http://www.fhcrc.org
>>
>>
>>
>> On Aug 24, 2011, at 12:14 AM, stu_the_flat wrote:
>>
>>      
>>> *****
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>>>
>>> Dear list users,
>>>
>>> We have a Zeiss 510 two-photon system, it seems to have a an
>>>        
> non-uniform
>    
>>> field of illumination,
>>>
>>> I have tried to test this by imaging a chroma fluorescent test slide
>>>        
> there
>    
>>> is a two fold drop in fluorescent signal across the X axis, the
>>>        
> there
>    
>>> appears to be a slight variation on the Y axis as well,
>>>
>>> What is most likely to be causing this? Is imaging a test slide a
>>>        
> fair test?
>    
>>> Any advice would be most welcome.
>>>
>>> Thank you
>>>
>>> Stuart McIntyre
>>>
>>>
>>> --
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> ton-illumination-tp6719119p6719119.html
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--


George McNamara, PhD
Analytical Imaging Core Facility
University of Miami