The FV-300 is a, very colorful, three channel system that permits simultaneous imaging of two laser channels and one transmitted channel. There are three lasers available: an
Argon (488nm), a (Helium Neon (Green))
HeNe(G) (543nm), and a HeNe(R) (633nm). The inverted microscope is an Olympus Xi70 with a Xenon illuminating system for traditional fluorescence, several objectives including 60X and 100X oil immersion, a front port for a digital or film camera, and a step
motor attached to the focusing system that permits changes as small as 0.025mm in stage location along the z-axis (Expanded Confocal Description). This system can collect a large series of optical
sections that represent a volume in a transparent object in which some parts are fluorescent. These ‘stacks’ of images can be converted into 3-dimensional reconstructions of the object volume from which they were collected to provide a visual
‘story’ of the distribution of fluorescent objects in that space. Each image of a stack of optical sections (except those collected by the transmitted channel) is projected through a small aperture which only transmits in-focus parts of the
image to the detector, thus, each image recorded in the first and second channels is a best focus image.
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