IFA

Case Study: LED fluorescence microscopy on IFA slides

Immunofluorescence assays for autoantibody detection require a heavy use of the microscope and consequent fluorescent light source consumption. Traditional Mercury vapour gas lamps exhibit a limited lifetime of a few hundreds of hours and consequent electrode consumption may result in difficult diagnosis of the lower level titres and different fluorescent patterns. The present case study describes an illuminator for epi-fluorescence microscopy with a solid state light source (LED) which can be employed even on microscopes already placed in the laboratory

Introduction

In modern fluorescence microscopy, Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) offer a compelling advantage to traditional light sources for several reasons. The particular geometry of these solid state light sources, very different from gas vapour lamps, require an optimized design of the reflected light path in order to deliver clear high quality images. Therefore FLUOLED® 1CFW (1 Colour Filter Wheel) reflected light illuminator represents a fast and reliable solution for fluorescence microscopy using light emitting diodes as a source for excitation. Different from other LED devices for fluorescence microscopy, FLUOLED® 1CFW includes a complete reflected light illuminator.

FLUOLED® 1CFW: 1 Colour Filter Wheel reflected light illuminator for Immunofluorescence Assays.

The system allows the technologist to quickly scan images profiting form the advantages offered by modern solid state light source (LED): no frequent replacement of light source, reduced heat production (very important in case of laboratories with many microscopes), no warm-up time and no misalignment of light source due to electrode consumption, just to mention a few. The clarity and quality of the positive images is also enhanced by the LED fluorescence illuminator, leading to accurate identification of the fluorescent staining pattern. The Blue LED proved to be an optimized light source for this type of samples, allowing also to visualize Evan’s Blue counterstaining. In addition the illumination can be set to a safe 50% intensity with reduced risk of bleaching out the well before acquiring the final digital image at full intensity.

Results

The use of a high power solid-state (LED) source enabled increased performance, significantly increased light source lifetime, reduction of initial costs and operating costs, and reduction of maintenance and heat production. Main FLUOLED® 1CFW product benefits are:

• Light source lifetime: typically 30.000 hours, thus allowing many years of operation and cost savings
• No need of any special alignment procedure.
• No warm-up time required for the light source.
• Additional LED sources and filter sets can be added to the system at any time.
• Reduced heat emitted by the light source: very important in case of laboratories with more work stations.

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