Software Control of a Confocal Microscope
2011
Confocal fluorescence microscopy is an optical imaging technique that has high
resolution and can be used to detect individual fluorescing molecules. It is commonly
used in biology, medicine and materials research. A confocal microscope system
contains scanning mirrors, objective lens, laser and detector. The laser beam is
directed by 2 scanning mirrors and it will be focused by an objective lens onto the
sample and the emitted fluorescent light is collected by a photodetector. In order to
obtain an image of the sample, the laser beam is scanned along the x-y axis and the
intensity is function of the coordinate I(x,y).
When a photon hits the photodetector, a short TTL pulse is generated. In order to
obtain light intensity we need to know the number of photons (TTL pulses) over a
fixed time interval (for example 10 ms). This has been realized with a National
Instruments Data Acquisition (DAQ) card model NI 6602, which contains 8 high
frequency counters.
This master thesis is about developing a LabView software to control the scanning
and the DAQ card. It is divided into four different programs, the first for controlling
the mirrors, the second is for plotting the intensity on a graph and save the data in a
binary file, the third is for counting the number of pulses on one specific spot and the
last is for analysing data.
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