Optical Imaging Program

The Harvard NeuroDiscovery Center - Optical Imaging Facilty - provides access to advanced confocal, multi-photon and wide field microscopy services. Comprehensive training in data acquisition and image analysis are offered as customized services to new and established users throughout the NeuroDiscovery community. Please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , the optical imaging manager, or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , the optical imaging technician to discuss your imaging needs.

Program Resources

Instrumentation

Two Zeiss LSM 510 META upright confocal microscopes and a Yokogawa Spinning Disk microscope are the centerpieces of the facility.

Each LSM 510 microscope has three visible wavelength lasers and a META spectral emission detector.  The UV system and the 2P system differ principally by their respective UV laser or two-photon laser.

The UV system features the Coherent Innova® Enterprise™ II ion laser system which offers powerful 80mW multi-color performance in the true UV range at 351nm and 364 nm.

The Two-Photon system features the Coherent Chameleon™ Multi-photon Excitation (MPE) laser tunable from 720nm – 930nm with 4 NLOs (External detectors). The Chameleon™ provides widely tunable femtosecond pulses with more than 1W of average power.

Olympus/Andor/Yokogawa Spinning Disk Microscope

Peripheral Equipment

• VWR tissue culture incubator (37°C w/ 5% CO₂) for short-term storage.

Workstations

• Dell Optiplex 980 2.93 GHz processor (4 cores, w/ HT), 16 GB RAM and 512 MB ATI Radeon HD 4550
• Dell Precision 380 3.73 GHz processor (2 cores, w/ HT), 3.5 GB RAM, and 512 MB Nvidia QuadroFX 4500
• Dell Precision 380 3.00 GHz processor (2 cores, w/o HT), 3.5 GB RAM, and 512 MB Nvidia QuadroFX 4400

Image Analysis

Imaris Bitplane - Easily work in 3D! Imaris loads, processes, visualizes, and measures a range of multi-dimensional images.  Results are displayed with advanced movie generation and export functions. The facility owns a license to Imaris Suite 5.5, FilamentTracer 5.5, Imaris XT and AutoAligner 2.0.

Metamorph Imaging System - MetaMorph's extensive analytical functions can measure areas and distances, count cells, graph intensity levels over time, deconvolve images, or color combine multi-fluorescence images.

Metafluar Offline- Software is designed for dual-wavelength intracellular ion measurements.

SVI Huygens Professional - Restore images and reduce out of focus blur by removing the PSF effect. 

Zeiss AIM - Create overlays, projections, and export images.

Viewing Images

LSM Image Browser - a free Windows program for viewing, manipulating and exporting Zeiss LSM Files. 

FocalPoint Image Viewer - a thumbnail viewer for Windows, Mac, and Linux that generates thumbnails from .lsm files.

ImageJ - a free NIH program for Macs, PCs and Linux. (ImageJ) (MBF_ImageJ)

NOTE: Additional instruments are always under consideration and investigators are encouraged to make recommendations regarding specific equipment that may be useful to the research community. Please contact the This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it with any questions or suggestions.

Access

Please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , the optical imaging manager, or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , the optical imaging technician to discuss your imaging needs.

If you need training or access to instruments, please familiarize yourself with the facility policies and complete the online user form. All users must complete training to gain access to the facility. After submitting the User Form you will be contacted to schedule a training session.

The facility is staffed from Monday-Friday, 8:00 am-5:00 pm. Experienced users are provided access out of the regular hours with consent from the Facility Manager. Only those users with sufficient training on the microscopes can gain access to the facility during off-peak hours.