Cellular explorations made easy! Biological applications of confocal and multiphoton microscopy

Abstract

Progress in imaging biological specimens has reached higher grounds with more exciting innovations in microscopy as well as developments in fluorescent labels. First is the confocal laser scanning microscope (CLSM) which allows optical thin sections of a specimen to be obtained resulting in much clearer, haze-free images. More recently, near infrared multiphoton (MP) systems have been developed for live cell imaging due to deeper penetration and longer cell lifetime imaging. MP microscopy also allows the imaging of many UV excited dyes without the use of the problematic UV laser.