Zeiss LSM880 Airyscan

The Zeiss LSM 880 with Airyscan is a powerful laser-scanning confocal microscope that offers super-resolution imaging. Its unique Airyscan detector improves the signal-to-noise ratio and resolution by collecting light that a conventional confocal system would normally reject at the pinhole. The system also offers a "Fast" mode, allowing for rapid super-resolution imaging, making it suitable for capturing dynamic processes in living cells. Exciting addition to CMIF: Zeiss LSM 880 with Airyscan is ... Zeiss LSM 880 Fast Airyscan Confocal | WEHI Core technology: Airyscan The key innovation of this system is the Airyscan detector, a 32-channel gallium arsenide phosphide (GaAsP) photomultiplier (PMT) array. In a conventional confocal microscope, a pinhole is used to block out-of-focus light to achieve optical sectioning. However, this also discards valuable in-focus light. The Airyscan detector solves this problem by using a new approach: It eliminates the physical pinhole and, instead, projects the entire Airy disk (the light pattern from a single point of fluorescence) onto the 32-element area detector. Each of the 32 elements functions as a very small pinhole. A post-acquisition processing algorithm reassigns the collected photons to their correct position, effectively increasing the resolution and signal-to-noise ratio. This process results in a 1.7x increase in spatial resolution over standard confocal microscopy, achieving resolutions down to 140 nm laterally (XY) and 400 nm axially (Z).