• Axial focusing over several 100 micrometers within milliseconds
  • Fast focusing/z-stacking
  • No vibrations

Currently, most focusing solutions rely on mechanical axial movements, which can spoil the specimen. The optical focusing scheme of Optotune’s electrically tunable lenses (ETLs) allow for movement-free axial focusing within milliseconds. The EL-16-40-TC is ideally suitable for microscopy. Depending on the implementation and the optical performance requirements, focusing ranges of 60-1000 microns can be achieved.

Optotune's Laser Speckle Reducer offers a compact and effective solution to reduce laser speckle in high intensity illumination. By using a 4-f system, the LSR can be used in combination with multimode fibers.

Applications:

  • Wide-field microscopy
  • Confocal microscopy
  • Two-photon fluorescence microscopy
  • 3D light-sheet microscopy
  • Transport-of-intensity (TIE) phase microscopy
  • Quantitative phase contrast in digital holographic microscopy

  Examples

Confocal pollen corn projection 180pxl
 

  2 Photon microscopy 180pxl

 
3D Fish Heart 180pxl

Confocal microscopy
(pollen corn)

 

Two-photon microscopy
(stained neuronal cell  population)

 

Light-sheet microscopy
(zebra fish heart)

 Configurations

microscopy configurations 577px


If magnification change is no issue it is recommended to mount the Optotune ETL directly after the microscopy objective, for example with the following adapter rings from Thorlabs:

  • RMSA5 - Adapter with External C-Mount Threads and Internal RMS Threads
  • RMSA6 - Adapter with External RMS Threads and Internal C-Mount Threads

Reference design package for a camera port adapter without mag change is available on request. Please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

microscopy camera adapter reference design 577px

 

For speckle-free fluorescence illumination the following configuration is recommended:

speckle free microscopy illumination 577px

 

More details can be found in the application note (see below).

Videos

P2 Microscopy

Three examples of Z-stepping in mircoscopy with the EL-10-30

Download video

 

Downloads

Microscopy presentation

Focus-tunable lenses for widefield, confocal, 2-photon and light-sheet microscopy

White paper "Focus-Tunable Lenses Enable 3-D Microscopy"

Laser speckle reduction

Application note LSR

See also our list of publications.

3rd party opensource hardware/software

External solution providers

Related products

       
EL 16 40 TC

 

Optotune EL-10-30-C  

 

EL-16-40-TC

 

EL-10-30-C

 

Laser Speckle Reducer