http://confocal-microscopy-list.275.s1.nabble.com/thermal-imaging-through-microscope-tp7588813p7588825.html
> Op 13 okt. 2018 om 06:38 heeft Karel Zuzak <
[hidden email]> het volgende geschreven:
>
> *****
> 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 Kathy,
>
> I am not aware of any commercially available thermal microscope but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
>
> While at NIH In the late 90s our lab was exploring various military technologies for medical application and thermal imaging was one.
>
> As you might imagine there have been great advances in thermal imaging as well as NIR based night vision. The advantage of thermal is that it is passive. Meaning one does not need a source. Your subject is the source. Unlike fluorescence or NIR where one must expose the subject to an excitation wavelength or NIR illumination.
>
> So thermal is great but we found a lot of subject to subject variability in temperature which may have been from the ambient surrounding or one of the many physiologic factors influencing temperature.
>
> The other difficulty with thermal was the need for expensive custom optics.
>
> So please know once you get a thermal system working you may encounter a lot of variability from your experiments that will require a lot of control to separate the potentially different sources to metabolism.
>
> Regarding the optics it’s a question of your budget. Back in the 1990s a system could easily cost over 100k for the camera alone and needed constant liquid nitrogen. The reason being thermal emission occurs around 7 to 14 um. Assuming I’m remembering correctly. A standard ccd or cmos detector won’t detect these wavelengths and standard glass optics won’t transmit those wavelengths sufficiently. So one must use specialized focal plane arrays and optics along with imaging methods using long integration or exposure times or co-adds etc. Then if you need greater magnification and need microscope optics then you need to be sure all the optics in that microscope light path will transmit the thermal wavelengths.
>
> That said great advances have been made in the thermal field. One can pick up a point/shoot IR thermometer at the hardware store. As an example the cost of consumer thermal imaging scopes for hunting applications are down to 5k where previously they could cost up around 80k. I have seen some as low as 700 but the image resolution and thermal variability reflect that price.
>
> So if you are set on doing this I would suggest knowing your continuum; the thermal/temperature and imaging sensitivity and resolution. Then I would start with a call to FLIR. They make a variety of thermal and NIR cameras and can possibly help you out. Another place you might like to call are microscope companies such as Zeiss, Nikon, Olympus etc and see what they have to offer.
>
> If after all this you are still interested and have the budget. I’m happy to work with you toward finding/developing a custom solution.
>
> Warm Regards
> Karel Zuzak
>
[hidden email]
>
[hidden email]
>
> 🤠
>
>
> On Oct 12, 2018, at 3:05 PM, Craig Brideau <
[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.
> *****
>
> BK7 optical glass, which is pretty common in microscope optics, drops off
> fairly sharply in transmission by 2 to 2.5um, so that will be a problem.
> The last time I heard about a lab attempting thermal imaging they had a
> custom gold-coated reflective objective constructed for the purpose, and
> designed all their other optics with IR glass like zinc selenide or
> similar. It seems unlikely this would work at all through a conventional
> microscope. I can point you to some additional resources if you are
> interested.
>
> Craig
>
> On Fri, Oct 12, 2018 at 12:17 PM Kathryn Spencer <
[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;
>> I'm looking for suggestions and equipment to do thermal
>> imaging through a microscope. We want to image C. elegans to look at their
>> body temperature under different metabolic conditions. While I know they
>> are poikilotherms, we believe they will show a difference to their local
>> background under these conditions. Can you recommend a decent camera for
>> thermal imaging? Are there IR cutoff filters or optics that will not
>> transmit IR wavelengths in a basic fluorescence-type microscope (needed for
>> worm-sized resolution ~10x mag)?
>> Thanks in advance.
>> Kathy Spencer
>>
>> The Scripps Research Institute
>> Dept of Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience
>> 10550 N. Torrey Pines Road
>> DNC 216
>> La Jolla, Ca 92037
>>