Sample
Projects

This example code is for the Zaber microscope well plate loader demo, which is a machine comprising a Zaber microscope with an X-ADR stage and X-LCA4 illuminator, a Mecademic robot arm on an X-LRM stage as a range extender, and a VSR on top of an LSM stage to transport well plates from two stack towers that use an X-SCA Process Controller to control solenoids that restrain the plate stacks.

Often we want to capture high resolution images of samples which we cannot fit into a single camera frame. In situations like this it makes sense to create an image tileset: a collection of images which when joined form an ultra-high resolution representation of the sample in question.

A focus map gives estimated focus heights for any location on a microscope slide.

The optimal strategy to scan a microwellplate is one where the scanning stage never pauses and images are acquired at regular intervals along the direction of travel. This can be accomplished by using a global shutter or Time Delay Integration (TDI) camera with a sufficiently short exposure to avoid motion blur. To reduce the scan time even further, we can avoid communications latency by using hardware triggers and buffered commands onboard the stages themselves. This allows for a substantial speedup compared to a conventional well-plate scanning strategy.

To acquire a sharp image from a microscope requires that the sample be in focus. This is achieved by positioning the sample at the correct distance from the objective lens. The human eyes and brain are good at judging when an image is in focus, so a typical workflow here is to manually move the objective up and down, watching the resulting image until it looks good. However, this process is tedious, subjective, and requires a person to be present every time a slide or objective is changed.

This example script demonstrates how to set up a Zaber motorized microscope stage to scan ANSI standard microplates with 96, 384, and 1536 wells.

This example script demonstrates how to switch between different filter cubes on the Zaber filter cube turret and Zaber microscopes equipped with it.

This example script demonstrates how to switch between different LED channels and change the illuminator intensity, using the X-LCA4 lighting controller and MLR3 illuminaor for multi-channel imaging of flourescent targets using multiple fluorophores.