CAMERA FOR HIGH-RESOLUTION 3D IMAGING IN MICROSCOPY HIGHRESOLUTION MICROSCOPY

The present invention comprises an accessory, attachable to a camera port of a host microscope, and enables a stack of focal images to be obtained at different depths. A conventional optical microscope, working with 3D samples, provides the sharp image of one section of the sample, the one above the focal plane targeted by the microscope objective. The rest of the sample sections provide a very blurred image. Only by shifting the stage it is possible to focus on sections of the sample at other depths. To capture a stack of 3D cross-sectional images of samples, an axial mechanical scanning process is necessary in which, at each step, the stage is mechanically moved. This process requires, for each step, waiting some time for the system to stabilise before finally capturing the image with the pixel sensor. This whole process can be too slow for moving samples. Even in the case of static samples, but immersed in a liquid medium, the mechanical scanning causes vibrations that can modify the characteristics of the sample. To avoid these problems, there are different proposals for optical accessories that allow the capture of image stacks without moving the stage. However, none of these solutions preserves the characteristics of the host microscope in terms of magnification, resolution, depth of field and aberration correction. A simple, robust and portable accessory for obtaining a focal image stack is therefore necessary. This accessory must be attachable to any microscope, maintaining its characteristics intact and providing fast focusing capacity without causing vibrations, inertia or changes in the scale of the focal stack images.