Tufts.Imaging Facility
Please contact me by email Alenka.Lovy@tufts.edu or phone phone (617-636-3795) if you have any questions.
As of January 16, 2013 both confocals are operational. The Leica confocal will primarily be in the upright position.
IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO CLEAN THE OIL OFF THE OBJECTIVES EVEN DURING YOUR IMAGING SESSION TO PREVENT IT FROM RUNNING DOWN THE LENS AND INTO THE INNER COMPONENTS OF THE MICROSCOPE--PLEASE TAKE CARE TO AVOID THIS AS IT WILL DAMAGE THE EQUIPMENT.
After our maintenance cleaning, we were notified not to use the felt black cloth as it generates too much dust. It should not be necessary to use these if the lights in the room are kept dim.
The Nikon was recently upgraded to NIS Elements 4, and if you use Imaris, it should now be able to recogize the imges.
Each lab group will now have a separate NIS Elements login using the Nikon Users windows account. Please see the note by the confocal.
Please check your optical configurations and be sure your emission filters don't cross the excitation lines! See me if you are not sure what I'm talking about.
The "confocal setting" in the emission filter wheel is now the left-most position in the Ti Pad.
I will be erasing data every month off both Leica and Nikon confocal hard drives. Please be sure to back up your data; you can save it for two months on the research storage drives (see me for access) but please move it to your permanent storage drives regularly.
In addition to signing up to use the instrument on the Webevent calendar, please log your actual usage time in the blue notebook behind the instrument if it differs from your original time, or email me to change it.
DAPI users: for your convenience, please consider using alternate dyes as nuclear stains if you want to use the Leica microscope.
If you are using two dyes (e.g. Alexa 488 and Alexa 561), you can get ToPro 3 (633nm excitation) to use as a nuclear stain, and image all dyes simultaneously (rather than scanning your DAPI separately). If you have Alexa 594--you will have cross-talk between this and the 633nm ToPro dye.
DAPI can be used with our new Nikon confocal that has a 405 nm diode laser.
The internet and USB drives should not be used!! (to prevent viruses)
