Leica Microsystems: Leica Science Lab

Science Lab

The knowledge portal of Leica Microsystems offers scientific research and teaching material on the subjects of microscopy. The content is designed to support beginners, experienced practitioners and scientists alike in their everyday work and experiments. Explore interactive tutorials and application notes, discover the basics of microscopy as well as high-end technologies – become part of the Science Lab community and share your expertise!

Primary Beam Splitting Devices for Confocal Microscopes

Current fluorescence microscopy employs incident illumination which requires separation of illumination and emission light. The classical device performing this separation is a color-dependent beam…

Pinhole diameter and diffraction pattern.

Pinhole Effect in Confocal Microscopes

When operating a confocal microscope, or when discussing features and parameters of such a device, we inescapably mention the pinhole and its diameter. This short introductory document is meant to…

HeLa cells stimulated with LPS. Image has been subjected to deconvolution.

Chronic Inflammation Under the Microscope

In the course of chronic inflammation certain body areas are recurrently inflamed. This goes along with many human diseases. With the help of widefield light microscopy, the underlying processes can…

Studying Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans)

Find out how you can image and study C. elegans roundworm model organisms efficiently with a microscope for developmental biology applications from this article.

From Light to Mind: Sensors and Measuring Techniques in Confocal Microscopy

This article outlines the most important sensors used in confocal microscopy. By confocal microscopy, we mean "True Confocal Scanning", i.e. the technique that illuminates and measures one single…

Video: The White Light Laser – How to Effectively Excite Multiple Fluorophores with a Single Light Source

The Leica White Light Laser produces a continuous spectral output between the wavelengths of 470 and 670 nm. It allows you to select 8 excitation lines from 3 trillion unique combinations for…

Schematic graph of the light path in a Spalt-Ultramikroskop.

Confocal and Light Sheet Imaging

Optical imaging instrumentation can magnify tiny objects, zoom in on distant stars and reveal details that are invisible to the naked eye. But it notoriously suffers from an annoying problem: the…

Acousto Optics in True Confocal Spectral Microscope Systems

Acousto-optical elements have successfully replaced planar filters in many positions. The white confocal, regarded as the fully spectrally tunable confocal microscope, was not possible without this…

Nobel Prize 2013 in Physiology or Medicine for Discoveries of the Machinery Regulating Vesicle Traffic

On October 7th 2013, The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has decided to award The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2012 jointly to James E. Rothman, Randy W. Schekman and Thomas C. Südhof…