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How are you establishing long-term measurement assurance in fluorescence microscopy?

TOP: Image of fluorescent reference material on microscope. BOTTOM: Charting of microscope control parameters.

TOP: Image of fluorescent reference material on microscope. BOTTOM: Charting of microscope control parameters.

Credit: NIST
  • Would your laboratory or company benefit from having an easy method to track fluorescence microscopy performance?

  • Can you compare your imaging results to those from last week?

  • Are your fluorescence imaging results quantitative?

Unambiguous detection of changes in biological cells with fluorescence microscopy requires strategies to assure that analytical performance of the microscope is stable over time, and few off-the-shelf methods are available for establishing these performance metrics. Click on this link to discover more about a protocol that uses an automated procedure and a stable fluorescence reference material for benchmarking the analytical performance of a microscope. We have evaluated several commercially available fluorescent materials and found that many are sufficiently photostable and homogeneously fluorescent for use as benchmarking reference materials. Importantly, this protocol can be used to chart the microscope performance over time and identify significant changes in the instrument which may affect comparability of imaging results.

Released September 24, 2014, Updated January 12, 2023