Slide scanner

Automated microscope designed for large-area image stitching up to 100 slides in brightfield, polarised light and 7 fluorescence channels.

• LED fluorescence excitation allows for high-speed imaging
• 2 cameras for colour brightfield and high-sensitivity monochrome for fluorescence
• Automatic focus mapping ensures that entire samples are captured in focus even at high magnification

Confocal microscopy

Advanced research microscopes which use lasers and sensitive detectors, excluding blurry signal to capture high resolution and 3D images of fluorescently labelled samples

• 7 laser lines and emission filters, with 2 high-sensitivity cameras and top of the range objective lenses
• Fast and gentle imaging for sensitive live-cell imaging
• Large area stitching of samples from large 3D specimens, down to organelles
• Live cell incubation, laser photo-ablation and microfluidics

• Versatile high-performance point scanning confocal microscope, ideal for thick samples
• 4 lasers and detectors for multicolour imaging plus 32 channel spectral detector
• Transmission detector for simultaneous brightfield and confocal imaging, including DIC optics and live-cell incubation chamber
• High Content Analysis for automated imaging and analysis of well-plates in widefield fluorescence camera mode

Histology

Observing magnified human and animal tissues often requires very thin slices. Curtin MRI’s suite of Leica instruments allow preparation of both paraffin and frozen sections for microscopy.

Tissue processor:

• Automatic dehydration and infiltration of fixed tissues with paraffin wax

Embedding station:

• Multiple mould sizes to make wax blocks

H&E staining station

• A ventilated area for routine Haematoxylin and Eosin staining
• Pots, racks, solutions and mounting media are included for Curtin MRI lab members

• 1 – 60µm manual precision paraffin sectioning including water bath and slide dryer

• For generating 5 – 60µm thick manual frozen sections
• Poly-l-Lysine or saline coated slides are available from Curtin MRI internal stores

Image visualisation and analysis

High quality publications need more than high-quality images, as data needs to be extracted through image processing and quantitative analysis. Staff and students have access to several high-end software packages on dedicated computer workstations.

• Navigate whole slides at various zoom levels, process and export large 2D image files from the Axioscan, and import from many other image sources
• Licensed modules for quantitative analysis including counting, fluorescence intensity, and morphology parameters. Intellesis is a machine learning tool to assist in robust thresholding and classification
• Large datasets can be recorded in Microsoft Excel using Batch Analysis

• Excellent visualisation and rendering capability for 3D datasets such as those acquired on the Dragonfly or Nikon A1+ microscopes
• Detection of objects and measurements of size, counts, intensity, distance measurements, spatial nteractions and colocalisation
• Machine learning object classification, plotting tools and data mining
• Easily reproducible processing and analysis steps using workflows and batch functions