A multi-labled sagittal section of a rat embryo. Fluorescence image
courtesy of Dr. Dragan Maric, NINDS, National Institutes of Health.
VS110™ FLUOReSCeNCe SYSTeM
eNHANCING THe CAPABILITIeS OF VIRTUAL MICROSCOPY
The VS110 fluorescence solution
The real power of the VS110 software lies in its functionality. It
is designed to provide all the features needed to make research
use as intuitive as possible. These functions are presented
to the user via an intuitive and easy-to-use interface.
The user is guided step by step through the virtual slide
acquisition process by the Scan Wizard. Full-slide scanning
can be set up with just three mouse clicks. With the VS110, it is
also possible to review the overview slide images and assign
individual magnifications, scan areas and other parameters to
the slides, even in a batch scan. Although several modes are
predefined, the advanced software allows experienced users to
be in full control of the details of the scanning process. Therefore,
different scan settings can be assigned to individual slides,
saving significant scanning time, as well as offering the possibility
of only scanning areas of interest, reducing the data file size.
For scanning fluorescence images the scan mode is enlarged
by a special Fluorescence tab, which has been adapted to fulfill
the special requirements of multi-fluorescence microscopy.
The acquisition process starts with generating a brightfield
or fluorescence overview image of the entire slide. It includes
the automatic detection of the specimen to avoid time-
consuming scanning of areas where there is no sample on
the slide. As a second step, the high-magnification scan is
automatically performed over the whole slide or over smaller,
predefined areas of interest using the preselected objective.
Multi-Channel Fluorescence
Configured with high-speed, 8 position excitation and emission
filter wheels, the VS110FL provides increased flexibility in the
choice of fluorochromes as well as extremely fast acquisition
of multi-channel images. Individual configuration of each of the
color channels helps to ensure the optimum focus for each
channel. Image acquisition is performed using a high per-
formance cooled 14bit monochrome CCD camera and stored
as full 16bit grayscale data.
Virtual-Z
TM
for Fluorescence Imaging
The VS110 fluorescence system is also capable of scanning
multiple large specimens in up to 15 z-planes. By selecting
the scan mode, the reviewer can just simply focus through
the sample, as well as examine regions of interest in different
dimensions. At each position of the whole sample,
the VS110 system acquires a series of fluorescence images
at various focus positions, and these fluorescence z-stacks
are stored within the images and can be focused virtually
on the monitor. The image is displayed without delay on the
screen while being scanned and can be immediately viewed
without affecting the acquisition. This is due to the high-
performance and unique multi-threading Olympus software.
Advanced Features
The optional VS-Desktop Review Station software contains
advanced imaging tools to further enhance the acquired
virtual slide images. Included in these tools are smoothing
and sharpening filters, min mean and maximum projections,
as well as no neighbor and nearest neighbor deconvolution.
Additional tools in VS-Desktop include separation of
each of the color channels, as well as exporting this data
to other 3rd party software for further image analysis.
